Jubilee coinage

The Jubilee coinage or Jubilee head coinage are British coins with an obverse featuring a depiction of Queen Victoria by Joseph Edgar Boehm. The design was placed on the silver and gold circulating coinage beginning in 1887, and on the Maundy coinage beginning in 1888. The depiction of Victoria wearing a crown that was seen as too small was widely mocked, and was replaced in 1893. The series saw the entire issuance of the double florin (1887–1890) and, in 1888, the last issue for circulation of the groat, or fourpence piece, although it was intended for use in British Guiana. No bronze coins (the penny and its fractions) were struck with the Jubilee design.

In 1879 Boehm was selected to create a new depiction of Victoria that could be adapted for the coinage – even though the queen marked her 60th birthday that same year, some British coins still showed her as she appeared forty years previously. Boehm gave only intermittent attention to the project, and it took years before it came to fruition. The queen finally gave approval in early 1887, and the new coinage was prepared. Some of the reverse designs for the coinage were changed at the same time, depicting heraldic imagery and engraved by Leonard Charles Wyon.

When the new coins were released in June 1887, they proved a popular souvenir of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, but they were criticised for the diminutive crown, and because the reverse designs did not state the value of the coin. The sixpence was gilded by fraudsters to pass as a half sovereign, and it was quickly withdrawn by the Royal Mint, which resumed its old reverse design (stating its value), slightly modified. Royal Mint authorities began to consider replacing the Jubilee issue within a year of its release, and this may have been hastened by Boehm's death in 1890. A committee was created to consider replacements, and the Old Head coinage, with an obverse created by Thomas Brock, began to be struck in 1893.