Half Guinea 2015 The East India Company, Coin from Saint Helena - detailed information

Saint Helena is a small island in the South Atlantic Ocean which is part of the British overseas territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. The currency of the island is the Saint Helena pound, fixed at parity with the pound sterling. The island has authorised some private mints to issue coins under its jurisdiction, which come in a variety of sizes. Some of them are non-standard and/or one-off issues in gold, such as this one.

This coin pays tribute to the original "Guinea" coinage of Great Britain.

The introduction of machine-struck coins to Britain in 1663 put an end to the dark art of "clipping", where criminals would shave the edges off coins to collect small fragments of the precious metals, devaluing the currency in the process. Now, gold and silver coins could be minted with a milled edge and edge lettering to deter this illegal behaviour.

Britain’s first machine-struck gold coin was the Guinea, which then played a vital role in the golden age of trade and exploration, travelling the world on The East India Company ships with its reputation for absolute quality and accuracy.

"Guinea" was originally just the coin’s nickname, given because much of the gold used to strike it came from Africa’s Guinea Coast, but the name became so widely used that it was officially adopted in 1720 under the reign of King George I. In later years The East India Company often supplied the gold used to mint these magnificent coins, and during the reign of George II some Guineas bore the EIC mint mark to recognise this.

Traditionally, a guinea was worth 21 shillings at a time when one pound was 20 shillings, which means that the current decimal equivalent of a guinea would be £1.05 - so the half is rounded to 50 pence.