Sovereign or Napoléon 20 Fr: which is the better buy today?
Sovereign holds 7.32 g of fine gold and Napoléon 20 Fr 5.81 g — close enough to be the same purchase in metal, and far enough apart in everything else not to be the same coin to own.
| coin | Sovereign | Napoléon 20 Fr |
|---|---|---|
| fine gold | 7.32 g | 5.81 g |
| gross weight | 7.99 g | 6.45 g |
| purity | 916.7 ‰ · 22 kt | 900 ‰ · 21.6 kt |
| diameter | 22.05 mm | 21 mm |
| thickness | 1.52 mm | 1.30 mm |
| face value | one pound | 20 francs |
| struck | United Kingdom · since 1817 | France · 1803–1914 |
The prices come from the feed, and the feed has not answered yet.
Sovereign — The small coin of the European market: struck since 1817, sold and bought everywhere, and hard alloy so it survives being handled.
Napoléon 20 Fr — The French 20 francs, from Bonaparte to the Great War: the most widely held of the small European gold coins.
Both are alloyed — Sovereign at 916.7 ‰ · 22 kt, Napoléon 20 Fr at 900 ‰ · 21.6 kt — hard enough to be handled without ceremony; the difference on the scale is alloy, not gold, and the fine gold weight beside it is the only one that counts.
Napoléon 20 Fr was money before it was an investment — struck from 1803 to 1914 — and is bought today as a bullion coin on the strength of being recognised everywhere; Sovereign has been struck for investors since 1817, and its price is the metal plus the mint’s and the dealer’s margin, nothing else.
So the comparison is the premium. Whichever of the two a dealer asks less for above its metal is the cheaper gold that day — and that changes shop by shop and day by day, which is what the numbers above are for.