1 oz Tudor Beasts Gold Coin

The Successor to the Queen's Beasts

The 1 oz Gold Tudor Beasts is the direct successor to The Royal Mint's completed 1oz Gold Queen's Beasts, running from 2022 to 2026 with ten designs released at a pace of two per year. The series draws from the King's Beasts stone statues on the Moat Bridge of Hampton Court Palace, originally installed by Henry VIII after he acquired the palace from Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in 1529. Each reverse, designed by David Lawrence, depicts a Tudor heraldic beast holding a shield bearing the arms or badge of its associated dynasty.

The coin contains 31.21 grams of .9999 fine gold and carries a face value of £100 as UK legal tender. That legal tender status delivers the same double tax advantage as the 1oz Gold Britannia: VAT-free on purchase and CGT-exempt on disposal. The Tudor Beasts shares this position with the Britannia, the 1oz Gold Royal Arms, and the completed Queen's Beasts.

The ten-design, five-year structure gives the Tudor Beasts a planned endpoint that generic bullion programmes lack. Buyers who complete the set will hold ten distinct .9999 gold coins with a unified artistic vision, all carrying the same CGT-exempt status. This collecting dimension commands a mild premium over the Royal Arms or Britannia, which have fixed or less frequently changing designs. Whether that premium is worth paying depends on whether the buyer values the collectible element or views gold coins purely as a metal-accumulation vehicle.

The series straddles the transition from Queen Elizabeth II to King Charles III on the obverse: 2022 issues bear the Jody Clark portrait of Elizabeth II, while 2023 onwards carry the Martin Jennings portrait of Charles III. Some collectors specifically seek matched sets with both portrait variants for each beast.

1 oz Gold Tudor Beasts Technical Details

The Ten Tudor Beasts

Tudor Beasts Full Bullion Range

The silver coins are .9999 fine (four nines), matching the Queen's Beasts and exceeding the Britannia's .999 (three nines). This higher silver purity is a consistent differentiator of The Royal Mint's "beasts" franchise. The bullion reverses feature a guilloche patterned background that serves as an anti-counterfeiting measure, distinct from the Britannia's four-feature security suite.

Tudor Beasts Tax Treatment by Country

As UK legal tender, the Tudor Beasts has the same tax position as the Britannia, Queen's Beasts, and Royal Arms.

• United Kingdom: Gold coins are VAT-free as investment gold. CGT-exempt as UK legal tender. Silver and platinum coins are also CGT-exempt but carry 20% VAT on purchase. The CGT exemption on silver is particularly notable because silver from non-UK mints (such as the 1oz Silver Maple Leaf or 1oz Silver Philharmonic) is subject to both 20% VAT and CGT in the UK. Tudor Beasts silver avoids the CGT component entirely.
• United States: Not specifically listed as IRA-eligible. UK coins at .9999 gold purity may be accepted by some custodians under the generic bullion provision. Capital gains are taxed as collectibles at up to 28%.
• European Union: Gold versions are VAT-exempt under the EU Investment Gold Directive. Germany offers complete capital gains exemption on bullion held for more than one year. Silver versions are subject to local VAT rates; some EU countries apply margin scheme taxation on secondary-market purchases.
• Canada: GST/HST exempt as investment gold at 99.5%+ purity. Capital gains are taxed at a 50% inclusion rate.
• Australia: GST-free as investment-grade gold. CGT applies with a 50% discount for holdings over 12 months.
• Singapore: GST-exempt as an Investment Precious Metal. No capital gains tax.
• Hong Kong: No sales tax, no import duty, no capital gains tax.

Hampton Court's Heraldic Guards

Hampton Court Palace's Moat Bridge originally held ten beast statues representing the heraldic lineage of the Tudor monarchs. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey built the palace from 1514, and after Henry VIII acquired it in 1529, the King's Beasts were installed as visible statements of Tudor dynastic authority. Each beast held a shield bearing the arms or badge of a specific royal ancestor or dynasty, turning the bridge into a heraldic genealogy in stone.

The original statues deteriorated over the centuries. The current figures on the Moat Bridge are 20th-century replicas carved by Joseph Cribb in the 1930s. These replicas are the reference point for David Lawrence's coin designs, though Lawrence has reinterpreted them for the circular numismatic format rather than directly copying the stone carvings.

The Royal Mint announced the series in October 2021, with bullion sales beginning in 2022. The Seymour Panther was the first release, representing Jane Seymour, Henry VIII's third wife and the mother of Edward VI. Jane Seymour's heraldic beast appears twice in the series (Seymour Panther and Seymour Unicorn), reflecting her importance in the Tudor succession. The Lion of England, the most prominent of the beasts, appeared as the second release in the same year.

The series straddles a historic transition on the obverse. The 2022 coins carry the Jody Clark portrait of Queen Elizabeth II; from 2023 onwards, the Martin Jennings portrait of King Charles III appears. This makes Tudor Beasts the first Royal Mint heraldic beast series to feature two monarchs during its production run. The Queen's Beasts, running 2016-2021, used only Elizabeth II portraits.

Precedent from the Queen's Beasts suggests a Completer Coin will conclude the series in or after 2026, featuring all ten beasts on a single design. This has not been officially confirmed, but the commercial logic and collector expectation are strong.

Tudor Beasts vs Queen's Beasts, Britannia, and Royal Arms

The Tudor Beasts competes with three other CGT-exempt Royal Mint gold coins, each offering a different value proposition within the same tax framework.

The 1oz Gold Queen's Beasts is the most direct comparison. Both are ten-design heraldic beast series from The Royal Mint. The Queen's Beasts was designed by Jody Clark and ran 2016-2021; the Tudor Beasts is designed by David Lawrence and runs 2022-2026. The Queen's Beasts drew from coronation heraldry spanning multiple dynasties; the Tudor Beasts draws exclusively from Tudor-era Hampton Court. The Queen's Beasts is completed and available only on the secondary market, where premiums on individual designs have risen since the series ended. The Tudor Beasts is still in production, with new designs released twice per year.

The 1oz Gold Britannia has the widest recognition, deepest liquidity, and strongest security features of any Royal Mint bullion coin. Its four-feature security suite (surface animation, latent image, tincture lines, micro-text) has no equivalent on the Tudor Beasts, which uses only a guilloche background pattern. The Britannia is the right default for buyers who prioritise liquidity and authentication. The Tudor Beasts is for buyers who want that CGT exemption combined with a collectible annual-design format.

The 1oz Gold Royal Arms takes the opposite approach: a single heraldic design, unchanged across seven years of production. There is no collectible premium tied to specific years; every Royal Arms coin is functionally identical. For buyers who want simple, repeatable gold purchases with no design-driven price variation, the Royal Arms is the most straightforward option in the Royal Mint range. The Tudor Beasts trades at slightly higher premiums on average because its annually changing designs create a mild collector surcharge.

For UK buyers, the tax position is identical across all four options. The deciding factors are: how much does the buyer value design variety (Tudor Beasts, highest), security features (Britannia, strongest), secondary-market scarcity (Queen's Beasts, fixed supply), or simplicity (Royal Arms, most predictable).