The Isle of Man has its own circulating coinage, which is used in parallel with the British Pound Sterling; it also issues an extensive range of Non-Circulating Legal Tender (NCLT) coins for collectors, as well as bullion coins in a variety of formats and designs.
The coin format most popular with collectors is the Crown, which has the same specifications as the British (decimal) Crown - also issued as a collector coin, and historically is derived from the British pre-decimal Crown, which was a circulating denomination.
After decimalisation, a Crown coin was nominally denominated as 25 pence, an old Crown being equal to five shillings, and a shilling re-denominated as five pence. The UK Crown and its derivatives - such as the Manx Crown - was later re-denominated as £5 in 1990. The Manx Crown displays the denomination as "Crown" though and not as £5 (which its UK counterpart almost never does), and is - also unlike the UK Crown - subdivided into fractional denominations, such as half-crown, one-tenth Crown etc.
This commemorative crown coin marks the centenary of the birth of Sir Winston Churchill.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 - 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, army officer, and writer. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, when he led the country to victory in the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955.
The reverse design is based on a medal which Pobjoy had prepared - but not released - in 1965, which was in turn based on a portrait photograph by Yousuf Karsh. |