Florin (English coin)

Edward III gold florin, or double leopard, struck between January and July 1344. England's first large gold coin was a failure. Valued at six shillings, it was overvalued, and the leopard coinage was demonetized on August 20, 1344. Only three are known: schoolchildren found two in the River Tyne in 1857, both now in the British Museum, which owns this one, and a metal detectorist found the third in southern England in 2006. On the obverse, at left, the king sits enthroned under a Gothic canopy on a field of fleurs-de-lis; the reverse sets an ornate cross inside a quatrefoil.