1g The Royal Mint Una and the Lion Gold Bar

The 1g Royal Mint Una and the Lion Gold Bar

The Una and the Lion bars belong to the Royal Mint's Great Engravers bullion bar series, launched in 2021 with this design as its inaugural release. The artwork reinterprets William Wyon's 1839 coin, a piece the Royal Mint Museum calls one of the most beautiful coins in the world, for a modern bullion format. Most gram-sized gold bars carry a refiner logo and little else; this one carries a design with a 187-year pedigree, which is the main reason to choose it over a generic gram bar.

The trade-off at this weight is cost. One gram is the smallest standard gold bar weight, equal to 0.03215 troy ounces, and it carries the highest premium-to-metal ratio of any bar size because minting, assaying, packaging, and distribution costs are roughly fixed regardless of how much gold is inside. The market for 1g bars is driven by gifting, novelty, and low-budget entry into gold ownership rather than accumulation. A buyer building a position by weight does far better with a single 1oz gold bar than with thirty-one separate grams.

Where the Una design earns its place is at the intersection of gift and investment. Gram bars are commonly bought as presents, and the Great Engravers bars are struck (minted) rather than cast, giving sharper detail and prooflike surfaces compared with typical bullion bars. The result is a small gold product that reads as an object with a story rather than a plain wafer of metal.

Una and the Lion 1g Bar Format

This is a 1 gram gold bar, the smallest standard bar denomination, equivalent to 0.03215 troy ounces. Like other Great Engravers products it is a struck bar rather than a cast one: cut and stamped with fine detail rather than poured into a mould. Royal Mint struck products carry the Royal Mint shield logo with weight and purity markings, micro-textured surfaces, and sealed packaging with Royal Mint authentication.

Gram gold bars are produced as small, thin wafers, typically around 8mm x 15mm, and are normally sealed in assay cards roughly the size of a credit card. The card matters more than its size suggests: it carries the authentication details, and keeping it intact and undamaged is essential for resale. A bar removed from its packaging, or a bar with a bent or damaged card, has noticeably poorer resale prospects.

The design itself shows Lady Una and her lion companion. Jody Clark's 2021 reinterpretation depicts Una holding the monarch's orb and sceptre, standing side by side with the lion, both facing forward. Storage is trivial at this size; the bar fits anywhere and needs no special provision beyond keeping the assay card flat and protected.

Tax Treatment of the 1g Una and the Lion Gold Bar

Gold bars are tax-efficient on purchase in most jurisdictions, but this one carries the standard UK bar caveat on disposal.

• UK: Investment gold bars are VAT-free for private individuals. They are NOT exempt from capital gains tax, however. Only UK legal tender coins (Britannias, Sovereigns and similar) qualify for CGT exemption; bars do not, regardless of the fact that the Royal Mint makes them. The Una and the Lion proof coins are CGT-exempt as legal tender; these bullion bars are not. In practice a single gram is unlikely to generate gains anywhere near the £3,000 annual CGT allowance, but the distinction matters for anyone accumulating quantity.
• US: Most states exempt bullion from sales tax, though several tax it or apply minimum-purchase thresholds that a single gram bar will not meet (for example New York exempts only transactions over $1,000). Long-term gains are taxed at the collectibles rate of up to 28%.
• EU: Investment gold bars at 995 fineness or better are VAT-exempt across all member states.
• Canada: GST/HST exempt for gold refined to 99.5% or better in bar form.
• Australia and New Zealand: GST-free as investment-grade gold at 99.5% purity or better.
• Singapore and Hong Kong: No GST under Singapore's IPM rules for qualifying gold, and no sales tax of any kind in Hong Kong. Neither charges capital gains tax.

From Wyon's 1839 Masterpiece to a Modern Bullion Bar

William Wyon RA created the original Una and the Lion design in 1839 to commemorate Queen Victoria's 1837 coronation. The five-pound gold coin depicted the young queen as Lady Una from Edmund Spenser's 1590 epic poem The Faerie Queene, walking beside a lion representing England, with the Latin inscription DIRIGE DEUS GRESSUS MEOS (May God direct my steps). It was the first time a British monarch had been shown on a coin as a fictional character, a bold and unconventional choice for its era. Only a few hundred pieces were produced, as presentation pieces never intended for circulation, and they rank among the most valuable British coins today: a specimen sold for £4.2 million at auction in 2024.

Wyon served as Chief Engraver of the Royal Mint from 1828 until his death in 1851, and his work includes the Young Head portrait of Victoria used on coinage through her early reign. In Spenser's allegory, Una symbolises Truth and the True Church while her lion represents England's strength.

The modern bullion bars arrived in 2021 as the first release in the Great Engravers series, with the design reinterpreted by Jody Clark. Where Wyon's original showed the monarch leading the nation, Clark's version places Una and the lion side by side, both facing forward. Initial distribution was exclusive to LPM in Hong Kong in February 2021 before widening to global dealers. The series name signals future releases drawing on other historic Royal Mint engravers' work.

Una and the Lion vs Other Gram Gold Bars

The 1g gold bar market is dominated by Swiss refiners. The most recognised gram bar globally is the 1g PAMP Suisse Fortuna, with its Lady Fortuna design sealed in an assay card; PAMP and Valcambi assay cards are effectively the global standard at this weight. Against PAMP, the Una bar trades wider availability and VERISCAN authentication for Royal Mint provenance and a more distinctive artistic design with a genuine historical story behind it.

Against generic refiner bars from Valcambi or Heraeus, the choice is simpler: those bars carry lower premiums and exist purely to deliver gold weight, while the Una bar commands a higher price for its design, branding, and collectibility. Buyers optimising for cost per gram should also consider the Valcambi CombiBar, a perforated sheet of individual gram segments that can be snapped apart, which carries a lower per-gram premium than separately packaged 1g bars.

The other comparison is within the Royal Mint's own range. The Britannia is the mint's flagship bullion coin rather than a bar, and for UK buyers it brings the CGT exemption that no bar can offer. A fractional gold Britannia coin costs more per gram but exits tax-free; the Una bar is the more interesting object, with limited-mintage collectibility across the Great Engravers series, but it is taxed like any other bar on disposal. No other bullion bar on the market draws on a design nearly two centuries old, which remains the Una bar's unmatched selling point.