Canadian Sovereign Gold Coin
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Canadian Sovereign
1918 Reverse

Canadian Sovereign
1918 Reverse
The Canadian Sovereign Gold Coin was first produced in 1908 and had been minted for 10 years until 1919 when production was stopped. There were no Canadian sovereigns were minted in 1912. Canadian sovereigns are very similar to British ones and you can identify them only by the C mintmark, which you can find just above the centre of the date. The first new Sovereign gold coins were minted in England since 1871. Later, Australia joined in producing sovereigns with the S mint mark from the Sidney Mint, and later from Melbourne and Perth Mints as well. Indian sovereigns from the Bombay mint were first issue the same year when Canadian ones stopped in 1919. South African sovereign were not produced until 1923.
The specifications for the Canadian Sovereign Gold Coin as of 1918 are as follows:
| Gold composition: | 0.9170 (22-karat) |
| Gold content: | 0.2354 oz |
| Weight: | 7.9881 g |
| Diameter: | 22.05 mm |
Canadian Sovereign gold coin is considered a moderately scarce to fairly rare gold coin depending on the year of issue as it's been minted only for a short period of time. The rarity of Canadian sovereigns are not quite proportional to the mintage figures as some coins were re-minted but can be used as a fair references. The largest mintage of Canadian sovereigns was in 1911, when 257,048 coins were produced and only a handful of sovereign was minted in 1908, 646 pieces to be exact, which instantly placed them in category of rare collector items. By the end of 1918 when the mintage of Canadian sovereigns was stopped, the Royal Canadian Mint produced in total 628,152 gold sovereigns.
The Ottawa mint opened in January 1908 and first coin struck by the mint was a fifty cents piece. The same year, the first Canadian Sovereign gold coin was minted. The purpose of striking Canadian gold sovereigns was mostly to utilize gold mined from new explored gold mines in British Columbia and Yukon. You can see mintage details for Canadian sovereigns for each year below:
| 1908 | 1909 | 1910 | 1911 | 1913 | 1914 | 1915 | 1916 | 1917 | 1919 |
| 646 | 16,300 | 28,020 | 28,020 | 3,717 | 14,900 | 6,119 | 58,875 | 106,570 | 135,957 |
You can see current listings for Canadian Sovereign gold coin here

