Landmarks of Britain Silver

The Royal Mint Landmarks of Britain Silver Series

Landmarks of Britain is a complete four-coin silver bullion series from The Royal Mint in Llantrisant, Wales, released between 2017 and 2019. Each coin contains 1 oz of .999 fine silver, carries a £2 face value as UK legal tender, and was capped at a maximum mintage of 50,000 per design. The four subjects are Big Ben (2017), Tower Bridge (2018), Trafalgar Square (2018), and Buckingham Palace (2019), which closed the set.

The series occupies the middle ground between pure bullion and full numismatics. Capped mintages give it collectible scarcity that the Royal Mint's uncapped flagship coins lack, but the coins were sold as bullion at bullion-style pricing. With all four designs now archived and sold out at the mint, supply comes entirely from the secondary market, where prices for several designs, particularly the Big Ben, have risen above original issue levels.

For UK buyers there is a structural attraction beyond the designs: as UK legal tender coins, any profit on sale is exempt from Capital Gains Tax, a benefit no privately minted round and no foreign coin can offer a British taxpayer. That makes the series an unusual combination among collectible silver coins: limited mintage, London landmark designs, and the same CGT shelter as a Britannia. The trade-off is that a completed, sold-out series will never have fresh supply, so buyers are choosing a collectible with a fixed population rather than a coin they can accumulate at spot-linked prices year after year.

Landmarks of Britain Specifications

All four coins share a single specification; only the reverse design and year differ.

The four releases:

The obverse of every coin carries Jody Clark's fifth-generation portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, introduced in 2015. No special anti-counterfeiting technology is documented for the series beyond standard Royal Mint quality assurance; the coins predate the micro-text and lenticular security features found on later Royal Mint bullion such as the post-2021 Britannia. Note the purity: the Royal Mint moved its Britannia to .9999 silver in 2013 but struck the Landmarks series at .999, which can matter in jurisdictions with purity thresholds.

Landmarks of Britain Tax Treatment

The series' UK legal tender status drives its most important tax outcome, and it is a UK-only advantage.

• United Kingdom: As UK legal tender coins with a £2 face value, all four designs are CGT-exempt: any profit on disposal is free of Capital Gains Tax, with no limit. New silver still attracts 20% VAT, though pre-owned coins bought from a VAT-registered dealer under the margin scheme carry VAT only on the dealer's margin, bringing the effective rate near zero. Since the series now trades almost entirely second-hand, margin scheme purchases are a realistic route for UK buyers.
• United States: Standard treatment as foreign silver bullion, with state sales tax rules varying. The research for this series records it as not IRA-eligible, so it should not be planned into a precious metals IRA.
• European Union: Full local VAT rates apply (17% to 27% by member state). UK legal tender status confers no EU tax advantage post-Brexit. Margin schemes for pre-owned silver coins operate in Germany and the Netherlands.
• Canada: GST/HST exempt as silver coins meeting the 99.9% federal purity floor.
• Australia: At exactly 99.9% purity the coins meet the investment-grade silver threshold for GST exemption when traded as bullion; coins changing hands at collector premiums may be treated as numismatic and attract 10% GST.
• Hong Kong and Singapore: Hong Kong levies no sales tax; Singapore exempts qualifying investment precious metals from GST.

Four London Landmarks, 2017 to 2019

The series grew out of a 2014 Royal Mint proof set that rendered four landmark designs in trichromatic colour printing on silver, limited to 3,500 sets. The success of that collector issue led the mint to adapt the same designs, without the colour, into a bullion programme beginning in 2017. All four reverse designs are the work of Royal Mint coin designers Glyn Davies and Laura Clancy.

The 2017 opener featured the Elizabeth Tower, universally known as Big Ben although that is technically the name of the 13.5-tonne bell inside; the design, showing the 96-metre tower from a low angle with the clock face prominent, had originally been created for a £100 commemorative coin in 2015. The series' busiest year was 2018, with two releases: Tower Bridge, the Victorian Gothic bascule bridge opened in 1894, captured with its twin towers and high-level walkways, and Trafalgar Square, showing Nelson's Column with the National Gallery in the background. Buckingham Palace closed the set in 2019 with a distant view of the monarch's official London residence.

One quirk has not gone unnoticed: despite the name Landmarks of Britain, all four subjects are in London. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England beyond the capital never appeared, and never will; the mint planned the series as a four-coin set from the start and confirmed Buckingham Palace as the final release. The complete series is archived on the Royal Mint website, and secondary market prices for several designs have climbed above their original issue prices, with the Big Ben leading.

Landmarks of Britain vs Britannia and Queen's Beasts

The natural first comparison is the Royal Mint's own flagship. The silver Britannia shares the £2 face value and CGT exemption but has no mintage limit, carries more advanced security features since 2021, and trades at lower premiums with far deeper liquidity. As pure silver exposure the Britannia wins on every count; the Landmarks series justifies its premium only as a collectible, where the 50,000 cap per design and completed-set status give it scarcity the Britannia will never have.

The closer relative is the Queen's Beasts series, the Royal Mint's other capped-mintage bullion programme. The Beasts run larger and purer in silver, 2 oz at .9999 fineness against the Landmarks' 1 oz at .999, span ten coins rather than four, and swap architecture for heraldry. Both series offer the same UK tax profile and the same collect-the-set dynamic; choosing between them is largely a matter of theme, budget per coin, and series length. Perth Mint has produced architectural coins of its own, but with Australian and international subjects rather than British ones, while the Austrian Philharmonic matches the .999 purity with no mintage limit and a musical theme.

The practical sorting: UK stackers wanting CGT-exempt ounces at the lowest cost should buy Britannias and treat the Landmarks as a collector's purchase. Buyers drawn to the series itself should know the supply picture, with all four designs sold out at the mint and secondary prices for several already above issue. A fixed population of at most 50,000 per design is the entire investment thesis beyond the silver content.