2003 Whole Coin Set UK Pattern £1 Set Silver Proof Bridges

A series of four pattern £1 coin designs by Edwina Ellis, representing England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

These pattern coins are not legal tender. 

Struck in sterling silver, 0.925 fineness, this pattern proof coin set comes in a presentation box with certificate.

Gold Pattern £1 Coins

Pattern coins do not have a denomination and are not British legal tender. These coins are sold as secondary market items. As they are sold on the Special Scheme, you only pay VAT on our margin (included in the price). 

Pattern Bridges Set

The Royal Mint issued limited edition collector sets of the coins in gold and silver, known as 'pattern pieces'. These special 2003-dated coins were produced to familiarise collectors with the new designs. They are not legal tender.

The coins in the sets will have on the obverse the portrait of the Queen by Ian Rank-Broadley, approved for use on United Kingdom coins from 1998, and they will be dated 2003.

The coins feature reverse bridge designs representing England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. (The Forth Bridge for Scotland, The Menai Straits Bridge for Wales, MacNeill's Egyptian Arch for Northern Ireland and The Millennium Bridge, in Gateshead, for England.) The reverse designs are by wood engraver Edwina Ellis, who won a limited competition judged by the Royal Mint Advisory Committee.

The new series of designs was required because the existing four-year sequence of reverse designs came to an end in 2002. It will represent the third series of £1 reverse designs. The first series of "Floral" designs was used between 1984 and 1987 and again between 1989 and 1992. The second series of "Heraldry" designs was used between 1994 and 1997 and was then repeated between 1999 and 2002. During the intervening years, and in 2003, designs representing the whole of the United Kingdom were employed.

The coins in the sets will be referred to as pattern pieces, that is, proposed coins and consequently they will have no status as current or legal tender coins. They will have plain edges and will therefore differ from the legal tender versions of the coins to be issued between 2004 and 2007, which will have a decorative design on the edge.

Precedents exist in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for the Mint issuing pattern pieces.(For example the George V Silver Jubilee Crown of 1935 and a plain edged sovereign of George VI in 1937.)

All four coins bear the fourth definitive coin portrait of Elizabeth II by Ian Rank-Broadley.