Last Friday, UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne was among those who went to the Goldsmiths' Hall in London on May 2 to watch the end of the Trial of the Pyx, of which Bloomberg deemed to be Britain's strangest and oldest legal procedures. The trial, which has been done for the last 800 years, is a mixture of a court case, industrial-quality check and marketing exercise for the country's official coin maker, the Royal Mint Ltd.
Despite the fact that the trial has not garnered much attention, it is because the minted coins have yet to fail the test in the last few hundred years, the news agency said. The coins produced by the Royal Mint reportedly go on trial every year before they end up in every wallet and cash register in the UK. After six weeks of checks, a panel of experts on Friday had approved the newly-minted coins.
Deputy clerk Nick Harland with the Goldsmiths' Company had explained to an audience of about a hundred people on how around 46,000 coins from New Zealand and the UK will be examined. The Pyx jury is then overseen by the Queen's Remembrancer, of which Bloomberg said is the oldest judicial position in the UK. Master John Leslie currently holds the position. Despite the fact that there were special juries held in the UK to deal with technical-related cases regarding the newly-minted coins, the country's 1971 Coinage Act had ensured that the Trial of the Pyx is the only case to be held to review UK coins.
"This is essentially the Royal Mint's big day in the sun. What we are testing for here is precious metal content, and the weight, size and shape," Harland said.
Bloomberg said that after the trial, the nation through the Trial of the Pyx will have a new type f coin to review, thanks to the efforts of the UK government to reduce money counterfeiting. Osborne earlier announced in March that the Royal Mint will be producing a new one-pound coin fit with features that will make counterfeiting of the said coin difficult. The Royal Mint had said that the new coin will have a have twelve-sided angular shape unlike the smooth outline of the recent version. The coin maker has boasted that the new coin will be the most secure in the world.
When asked about what measures the UK government would take should the coins fail to pass the test, communications officer Tom Almeroth-Williams for the Goldsmiths' Company said, "That hasn't happened in a really long time. The Royal Mint has very stringent standards."
