Antiques Dealer Guide - Articles

Until the Restoration English silver coins were stamped with a die and trimmed by hand. It had become a common practice to snip off a little bit of the edge of a coin before passing it on – once enough fragments were collected they were melted into an ingot and sold to a silversmith. Such a crime was punishable by death or branding, but the rewards were great as one “clipper” could fetch up to £6,000 ($9,000). To curb clipping a machine was devised to stamp and trim the coins to a circle, giving them a legend around the rim, which later became serrated or “milled”. As a result old clipped coins became worth half their face value; with both these and the new coins in circulation it meant the monetary exchange was in a mess.

Various measures to alleviate the problem were tried but the most meaningful was in 1697, when the required standard of wrought plate – items made of silver – was raised from 92.5 percent pure silver to alloy up to 97.84 percent. The new standard, known as New Sterling or Britannia Standard, was denoted by two new hallmarks – the figure of Britannia and the Lion's Head Erased. The Britannia Standard was the only legal quality of silver to be used from 1697 until 1720.