St. George and Dragon - Obverse Dies

Altered Dies
The first thing we noticed about the 2007 sovereigns was that they were a real pig to photograph.
We try wherever possible to use our own photographs, although sometimes we use images supplied by the various mints, at least on a pre-issue basis, replacing them with our own images as soon as possible after we receive our first deliveries.
Despite our considerable experience in photographing coins, the results can be quite variable. Some coins photograph beautifully, others are really difficult, and require time, patience, and experimentation before we can be happy with the results.
The 2007 sovereigns proved to be in the latter category,
It took us most of one day to get reasonably acceptable images, and we had to do quite a lot of post-production work on them. It was only once we had the first new images on our websites that we felt we could spare the time to start comparing them, which is when it started to dawn on us that the difference are not all explicable by poor production quality, but that the dies themselves, at least for the reverse, which have been changed. Although the obverse has not undergone any obvious changes, we have noticed an apparent reduction in

Changes
As far as the obverse is concerned, there appears to be no re-engraving, although there is a considerable loss of definition compared with a year 2000 dated sovereign which we used for comparison. The substantial re-engraving appears to to confined to the reverse side.
Both sides show many signs of hurried, or sub-standard production, with scuffs, radiating striations possibly caused through under-annealing of the blank planchets before striking. Unfortunately Yann, our resident photographer has already cleaned these off our image (his ambition is to work on a Miss World photoshoot), to rectify this, we will shortly be creating a separate "Spot the Difference" page.
We show obverse images on this page from a number of different recent years, and will be adding more soon.
In Stock Now
Both the proof and uncirculated versions are in stock now for immediate delivery. Notes