Posts Tagged ‘70th wedding anniversary’
New one-year only double portrait released to celebrate The Queen and Prince Philip’s 70 years of marriage
On the 20th November, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh will celebrate their Platinum Wedding Anniversary – that’s an incredible 70 years of marriage and a first in British royal history.
The Platinum Wedding Anniversary Five Pound Proof Coin
In honour of the occasion a new coin has been issued – featuring a specially commissioned one-year-only double portrait.
The coin has been officially approved by both Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Philip, and proudly displays their initials surrounded by a design inspired by the North Rose Window of Westminster Abbey – where their wedding took place in 1947.
But it is the new double portrait that will turn heads and have collectors rushing to secure theirs. Designed by renowned sculptor Luigi Badia, it features both The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh and will only ever be seen on Platinum Wedding Anniversary Coins.
It’s not very often that one-year-only portraits are released, not to mention a double portrait. They really are only issued for the most important Royal anniversaries.
New one-year-only obverse design
As you’ll appreciate, designing a new effigy is not a simple process, with an extremely rigorous approval procedure.
That’s why special portraits such as this are few and far between and are so popular with collectors.
Luigi, from New York, explains the concept behind the design:
“I was extremely honored to be commissioned to sculpt a brand new portrait to celebrate Her Majesty The Queen’s and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh’s 70th wedding anniversary. I was inspired to use a contemporary image of the royal couple to capture both their achievement of reaching such a milestone and to reflect on the long life they have shared together.”
The design process…
The design is intricately engraved onto the die
Careful consideration has to be put into the shape and size of the coin. Luigi painstakingly hand-engraved the design – with the added complication of retaining the typesetting within the circular shape.
The finalised ‘plaster’ engraving is then ready to be reduced down into a die (shown opposite) – which is hardened and used to mint the commemorative coins collectors can own.
Struck to a variety of specifications…
The new coin is to be struck in a range of different specifications, from a face value version right up to a staggering 10oz platinum edition – which has already sold out.
And the other coins are likely to prove just as popular – with a highly collectable proof coin, a pure silver coin, and a 5oz gold coin amongst those available, there is something to suit everyone.
These coins really do make a fitting tribute to Her Majesty and Prince Philip’s 70 years of marriage, and the stunning double portrait marks them out as truly prestigious commemoratives to forever remember this once-in-a-lifetime celebration.
The Platinum Wedding Five Pound Proof Coin
If you are interested…
You can mark the occasion by adding the Platinum Wedding Anniversary Proof £5 Coin to your collection today. It’s limited to just 4,950 worldwide and a sell-out is expected, especially as it features the new one-year-only double portrait.
Why the Queen & Prince Philip are literally 1 in a million (and Google doesn’t even know the answer)…
Google has the answer to everything. Well actually not quite everything, it seems…
Her Majesty the Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh at their Wedding in 1947
That’s because when I sat down to write this blog about the Queen and Prince Philip’s Platinum Wedding Anniversary in November this year, I thought it would be interesting to see how many couples actually celebrate 70 years of marriage.
The answer is Google doesn’t know.
And the more I dug around, the more I realised the reason why. It’s incredibly rare.
So if Google can’t tell us, let’s see if we can come up with an answer.
Fundamental to the problem is that there is simply no central record of how long marriages last until one of the couple passes away. But perhaps we can make some assumptions based on some of the statistics that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) do publish.
How likely are two people to both make it past their 90th Birthday?
In 1947 the median age for marriage was 23.7 for men and 20.5 for women[i], making Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten pretty typical of their generation, marrying aged 21 and 26. It also means it’s fair to work on the basis that for nearly any couple celebrating their Platinum Wedding Anniversary, they are both going to be in their nineties.
So the chances for making it past the age of 90 in England and Wales is 0.8%[ii]. That means that the chances of two people BOTH making it is:
0.008 x 0.008 = 0.000064
0.0064% chance of two people both making it past their 90th birthday.
How many people were married in 1947?
Fortunately, it is much easier to uncover how many people married in 1947. In fact 1947 is the very first year that the ONS not only holds data for the total number of marriages in England and Wales but also in which month they took place.[iii]
Certainly by choosing November, they were not following the trend. In fact with fewer than 30,000 marriages that month, it was the third least popular month for weddings that year.
Overall, the young princess and her naval officer beau were one of 401,210 couples to tie the knot that year. Statistics for Scotland and Northern Ireland appear more difficult to track down but it would be reasonable to extrapolate the numbers based on the overall UK population split, which suggests a figure for the whole of the UK.
466,000 UK marriages in 1947.
But what about divorces?
Data is not easily available for 1947 but it can be found for English and Welsh marriages in 1950[iv]. According to the ONS, 8.6% of marriages at that time ended in divorce, so we should discount them out from our 466,000 UK marriages.
466,000 x 91.4% = 426,000 non-divorce marriages in 1947.
How many Platinum Wedding Anniversaries might we expect this year?
So we have now have two critical pieces of data. The chances of two people making it past the age of 90 – the realistic milestone age to celebrate a Platinum Wedding Anniversary – and the number of marriages in 1947 that did not end in divorce.
Based on that we can multiply the two numbers together to give us a pretty reasonable estimate of the number of couples who will celebrate 70 years of marriage this year.
426,000 x 0.0064% = 27 Platinum Wedding Anniversaries
So, although there are no official statistics to back it up, it seems likely that only around 30 couples will join the Queen and Prince Philip in celebrating their Platinum Wedding Anniversary this year. Or to put it another way – just 60 people in the UK will mark 70 years of marriage in 2017 – that’s 1 in a million.
That’s why for me, forget the Jubilees; forget the birthdays. For the Queen and Prince Philip their Platinum Wedding Anniversary is the pinnacle of their long list of incredible milestones. And we, the British people, must join them in marking this historic moment.
[i] www.census.gov
[ii] www.theguardian.com
[iii] www.ons.gov.uk
[iv] www.ons.gov.uk
