The Young Victoria Collection
Private
Updated:
6/30/2026
Views: 2,333
The young head Victoria sovereigns are perhaps the top-drawer coins to collect from an interesting period of British history.
The early Victorian period was something of a romantic renaissance: A young queen, crowned in her teens and married to a storybook prince after half a century of rule of aging kings, tarnished by illness, scandal, and financial extravagance:
• George III’s regency, 1788-1820
• George IV, 1821-30
• William IV, 1830-37
It was a time of challenges, but also of innovations, discoveries, and reforms:
• The Industrial Revolution: steamships, railroads, electricity, and global communications
• The Irish Potato Famine (1845-52), Crimean War (1853-56), Opium Wars (1839-42 and 1855-56), and the Indian Rebellion (1857)
• The Great Exhibition (1851), Renkioi Hospital (1855), Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), the Suez Canal (1859-69), Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863)
• The Reform Acts (1832, 1867, 1884), Repeal of “Corn Laws” (1846), The Raj (1858)
The sovereigns from this period featured a bust of the young Queen Victoria designed by William Wyon on the obverse. The reverse featured a crowned royal shield initially, but transitioned to a previous reverse design by Benedetto Pistrucci, depicting St. George slaying the dragon starting in 1871.
From a collector’s standpoint, young head sovereigns are easily the most attractive of Victoria’s reign, and are quite difficult to acquire in XF or better conditions. Their weight was critical: because they were made of soft gold and in constant use for trade, coins that became too light were repeatedly withdrawn, melted, and recoined, leaving a very small population for future collectors.
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