5 Guineas - Elizabeth II 200th Ann. of the 1816 recoinage

The 1816 Great Recoinage was a genuine crisis response, not a ceremonial reform. Decades of clipped, counterfeited, and debased silver had left British currency nearly dysfunctional — the Mint estimated that a substantial portion of circulating coin was underweight by at least a third. Under the direction of William Wellesley-Pole as Master of the Mint, the operation withdrew and remelted the old hammered coinage and introduced machine-struck sovereigns and crowns to a design by Benedetto Pistrucci.

Gibraltar's commemorative program has long mined British monetary history for gold issues aimed squarely at the collector market. The 1816 recoinage is one of the more defensible subjects in that catalog.