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Victorian-era £5 gold coin showing the 20-year-old Queen leading a lion representing the burgeoning British Empire sells for a record £530,000
- The 1839 ‘Victoria Una and the Lion’ five pound shows the queen leading a lion
- Shows Victoria as Una, from Edmund Spenser’s Elizabethan poem Faerie Queene
- Only 400 of the gold coins, by William Wyon, of the Royal Mint, were ever struck
- It had been expected to fetch £190,000 but beat previous record of £421,000
A rare Victorian gold coin considered to be one of the most beautiful ever produced has fetched a record £532,000.
The 1839 ‘Victoria Una and the Lion’ five pound coin shows the 20-year-old queen leading a lion representing the British Empire.
It depicts Victoria as Una, from the Elizabethan poem The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser.
The 1839 ‘Victoria Una and the Lion’ five pound coin shows the 20-year-old queen leading a lion representing the British Empire
It depicts Victoria as Una, from the Elizabethan poem The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. The reverse carries a portrait of the monarch (pictured)
The reverse carries a portrait of the monarch.
Only 400 of the gold coins, designed by William Wyon, chief engraver at the Royal Mint, were struck.
The piece, described as ‘a truly stellar example of one of Britain’s most iconic and beautiful coins’, was sold by a private collector through US-based Heritage Auctions, in Dallas, Texas.
It had been expected to fetch £190,000 but eclipsing the previous record of £421,000 for one of the coins in 2017.
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