The Royal Mint’s iconic Una & the Lion coin makes the leap to bullion with the first ‘Great Engravers’ bars

William Wyon’s gorgeous 1839 work ‘Una & the Lion’ has long been a classic of the numismatic world. Unique at the time for depicting a reigning monarch, in this case Queen Victoria, as a fictional character, only a few hundred were struck originally. Fortunately, the Royal Mint reimagined the work in 2019 with the first of its ‘Great Engravers’ releases. A proof range that didn’t top out until it hit the heady heights of a FIVE kilo gold version, none of the range was particularly affordable.

Fast forward to today and the mint has brought the Una & the Lion concept into the 21st century with a modern reinterpretation, and instead of applying it to coins, has launched a new ‘Great Engravers’ bullion bar range with it. We don’t normally cover bullion bars here – there’s only so much we can do – but we do make exceptions for releases that have a lot of crossover appeal. Like this.

It’s a very pretty design, going with a layered profile that shows all of the original element clearly. A simple pattern in the background field keeps it busy all over. It manages to distil everything about the original into a completely different form with great success. It’s a bar, so the obverse has no denomination it, rather the mint logo and specification.

As for the formats, a single gold variant comes in at the ultra-popular one-ounce weight, and that has a mintage of 4,000 pieces. Silver is more varied, with three on offer. Starting at the ubiquitous one-ounce, there’s also a ten-ounce, and a mightily impressive 100-ounce (3.2 kilo). Mintages on these are 35,000, 6100, and 1200 pieces respectively. These are exclusive to LPM HK, so head on over there if you want one of these beautiful bars.

MINTS DESCRIPTION

For centuries, The Royal Mint has selected the finest artists to produce designs for our coins, bars and medals, some of which have gone on to feature on the most iconic coins in the world. Inspired by this classic design work, our new collection of bullion bars features contemporary interpretations of designs created by celebrated engravers.

The bullion collection begins with Una and the lion, which was first brought to Britain’s coins by William Wyon RA. The esteemed engraver depicted Queen Victoria as Una and the lion represented her proud nation. Jody Clark has created a new vision of the gentle Una, who holds the monarch’s orb and sceptre and stands with the lion, their eyes looking towards the future.