Sovereign or 50 Pesos: which is the better buy today?
Sovereign holds 7.32 g of fine gold and 50 Pesos 37.50 g: 50 Pesos holds 5.12 times the gold of 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.
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.
50 Pesos — The Centenario: 37.5 g of fine gold, more than an ounce, struck for the centenary of independence and restruck ever since with the 1947 date.
Both are alloyed — Sovereign at 916.7 ‰ · 22 kt, 50 Pesos 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.
50 Pesos was money before it was an investment — struck from 1921 to 1947 — 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.
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 7.32 g the small coin carries far more of it per gram than the big one does over 37.50 g — which is why Sovereign is nearly always the dearer gold, and why it is bought anyway: it sells in smaller pieces, and sells everywhere.