Half Sovereign or American Eagle 1/2 oz: which is the better buy today?

Half Sovereign holds 3.66 g of fine gold and American Eagle 1/2 oz 15.55 g: American Eagle 1/2 oz holds 4.25 times the gold of Half Sovereign. The metal costs the same per gram in both; what differs is how much of the price is the coin rather than the gold — and the small one always carries more of it.

Half Sovereign — Half the Sovereign in every way but one: the same 22 carat alloy and the same St George, on 3.66 g of gold, and a premium that is not half — a coin costs the same to strike whatever it weighs.

American Eagle 1/2 oz — Half an ounce of gold in the Eagle’s 22 carat alloy, so 16.97 g on the scale, with the twenty-five-dollar face value. Struck in smaller numbers than the ounce or the tenth, which shows in its premium.

Both are struck in 916.7 ‰ · 22 kt: the same alloy, the same feel in the hand, and any difference on the scale is a difference in gold.

Both are modern bullion coins, struck for investors — Half Sovereign since 1817, American Eagle 1/2 oz since 1986 — and priced on their metal and the margins above it.

What decides between them is not the gold, which costs the same per gram in both, but everything charged per coin: striking, distribution, the shop’s margin. Spread over 3.66 g the small coin carries far more of it per gram than the big one does over 15.55 g — which is why Half Sovereign is nearly always the dearer gold, and why it is bought anyway: it sells in smaller pieces, and sells everywhere.