When HRH The Princess of Wales, the then Catherine Middleton, and the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, both said ‘I do’, they accepted gold wedding bands from their respective husbands, sourced from Clogau-St David’s Gold Mine.
The Princess of Wales attends The Order of The Garter service at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, in June 2023
Welsh gold — and Clogau gold in particular — has long been prized for its connection to the Royal Family. In fact, as well as The Princess of Wales and Duchess of Sussex, Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, Princess Anne and Diana, Princess of Wales, all wore Clogau gold wedding bands. But it has also been prized for its rarity — with a total of 80,000oz mined since 1854 (for comparison, the world’s biggest gold mines can extract more than 1,000,000oz in a single year) and resources assumed to have been exhausted at some point in the 1990s.
Until now.
In 2018, Alba Mineral Resources bought what was once the UKs richest gold mine and embarked on a series of exploration and rehabilitation programmes — with the aim of using new, cutting-edge technology to seek out new seams of gold. Their exhaustive efforts have paid off because gold has been successfully mined from Clogau once again — and it will soon be available to purchase via an exclusive auction.
Alba has minted the gold into three exclusive 28-carat, 1oz ‘Tyn-y-Cornel’ coins. The front side features a Welsh dragon atop Cadair Idris (one of Snowdonia’s highest mountains); the reverse, an image inspired by old photographs of Welsh miners.
The first of these 1oz coins came up for auction towards the end of March and sold for £20,000 — nearly 8.5 times the current gold price. A further seven due to be manufactured. The definition of ‘limited edition’, each coin will arrive at its lucky owner's house in a Welsh oak box, lined in crushed velvet.
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