HMS Astrea was a 32-gun frigate that captured the French privateer Sans Culotte in 1793, one of the first significant Royal Navy prize seizures of the Revolutionary Wars. The Pobjoy Mint has produced coins for British Overseas Territories and minor issuing authorities for decades, and this piece falls into that category — a collector-market issue with no meaningful circulation history. Virenium, a proprietary copper-nickel alloy developed by Pobjoy, was introduced specifically to give their strike-to-order issues a distinctive appearance and resistance to the tarnishing problems that plagued earlier base-metal commemoratives.
HMS Astrea was a 32-gun frigate that captured the French privateer Sans Culotte in 1793, one of the first significant Royal Navy prize seizures of the Revolutionary Wars. The Pobjoy Mint has produced coins for British Overseas Territories and minor issuing authorities for decades, and this piece falls into that category — a collector-market issue with no meaningful circulation history. Virenium, a proprietary copper-nickel alloy developed by Pobjoy, was introduced specifically to give their strike-to-order issues a distinctive appearance and resistance to the tarnishing problems that plagued earlier base-metal commemoratives.