The American Gold Sovereign

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Aramco needed more gold coins to pay the Saudi royalty in 1947. The 1947 American sovereigns contained the same amount of gold as the British sovereign. These coins saw limited use in Saudi Arabia for a short time and for about $12 or 40 silver Saudi riyals. Their popularity declined after Swiss and Lebanese counterfeits made light weight copies of them. The Saudis melted many of these pieces and converted the bullion into their country's gold sovereigns. As a result these coins are quite scarce today and rarer than their larger 1945-6 counterparts. The original mintage was 121,364 pieces.