William Wyon’s Three Graces was rejected in 1817 and spent two centuries in institutional collections before the Royal Mint revived it as the second release in its Great Engravers series in 2020. The modern reissue attracted strong demand at launch and has sustained a healthy secondary market ever since.
A Coin That Never Circulated
In 1817, following the Napoleonic Wars, William Wyon, then an assistant engraver at the Royal Mint and eleven years before he would become Chief Engraver, produced a pattern crown for Britain.
The reverse shows three female figures representing England, Scotland, and Ireland, arms interlinked, with national emblems at their feet — a harp for Ireland , a thistle for Scotland and a rose-emblazoned shield for England — surrounded by the Latin legend Foedus Inviolabile (‘an unbreakable league’).
The composition is unusually sculptural. Wyon drew on Antonio Canova’s marble group of the Graces but adapted it into a shallow relief that reads clearly at scale.
The drapery is confident, the figures balanced without stiffness. Where British coinage of the period tended toward crowded heraldic arrangements, this was classical and restrained — and, given the political context of post-Napoleonic union, deliberately so.
The design was never adopted. Court politics, competing proposals, and the rising influence of Benedetto Pistrucci worked against it. Only a handful of trial strikes were produced, most ending up in institutional collections. Among collectors, the original Three Graces occupies the same tier as the 1839 Una and the Lion — a benchmark of British numismatic art that rarely comes to market, and is closely watched when it does.
The Modern Reissue
The Royal Mint brought Wyon’s design back using high-resolution scans of surviving patterns to map the full relief, with laser-cut dies and modern presses producing results that nineteenth-century striking could not.
The pieces were issued in 999.9 fine gold to a proof finish across several sizes. The 2 oz and 5 oz are the reference points — large enough to show the engraving properly, with mintages in the low hundreds for the 2 oz and lower still for the 5 oz.
Above them sit the 1 kg, 2 kg, and 3 kg proofs, produced in made-to-order quantities. At these scales the design reads less like a coin than a low-relief sculpture.
The difference between the modern proofs and surviving originals is easy to see. Nineteenth-century examples often show softness at the high points, where striking pressure couldn’t fully fill the die. The new pieces are sharp throughout — gown folds, shield textures, and the lettering of Foedus Inviolabile all rendered with a precision the original strikes couldn’t reach. On the obverse sits Jody Clark’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.
Market and Value
The reissue has followed the Una and the Lion in building a solid secondary market. The 2 oz gold proof is the most traded format — issued at £2,450 ($3,100), raw examples now typically fetch £12,000–£15,000 ($15,200–$19,000), with graded PF70 pieces regularly reaching £16,000–£20,000 ($20,300–$25,400) and higher. The 5 oz, issued at £5,650 ($7,200), is less frequently traded; dealer asks now start at £30,000 ($38,000), with graded examples pushing beyond that. The larger formats — 1 kg and above — rarely surface publicly and tend to change hands privately.
The collector base spans traditional numismatists and a newer audience drawn primarily to design — a breadth that has kept demand steady rather than speculative. Condition matters — at the top grading tiers, a hairline is significant. And as with any proof series, value follows the design and the market for it, not the spot price of gold.
Where It Stands
Within the Great Engravers series, the Una and the Lion, the Three Graces, and the Gothic Crown have become the most recognisable and sought‑after designs. Subsequent releases have broadened the series, but these remain the pieces most closely associated with it. The Three Graces gold proofs are precisely struck, tightly limited, and rooted in a design with two centuries of history behind it — a legacy that continues to resonate with collectors today.
