UK holds ceremony replete with tradition to consider coins

By DANICA KIRKA
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — A jury has sat solemnly in a gilded hall in central London, presided over by a bewigged representative of the crown in flowing black robes, but there were no criminals in the dock. Britain’s coinage was on trial. In a ceremony that dates back to the 12th century, the jury filed into the livery hall of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday to begin the process of weighing and measuring hundreds of coins to ensure they meet stringent standards set by regulators. The tradition — known as the Trial of the Pyx — amounts to a very old type of consumer protection designed to safeguard the nation’s coinage from counterfeiting or other forms of debasement.