Trial of the Pyx Trial of the Pyx The Trial of the Pyx () is the procedure in the United Kingdom for ensuring that newly minted coins conform to the required standards. These trials have been held from the twelfth century to the present day, normally once per calendar year. The form of the ceremony has been essentially the same since 1282 AD. These events are trials in the full judicial sense, presided over by a judge with an expert jury of metallurgical assayers. Given modern production methods, it is unlikely that coins would not conform, but this has been a problem in the
Coins of the pound sterling finally abandoned it in 1992 when smaller, more convenient, "silver" coins were introduced. All coins since the 17th century have featured a profile of the current monarch's head. The direction in which they face changes with each successive monarch, a pattern that began with the Stuarts, as shown in the table below: For the Tudors and pre-Restoration Stuarts, both left- and right-facing portrait images were minted within the reign of a single monarch (left-facing images were more common). In the Middle Ages, portrait images tended to be full face. There was a small quirk in this alternating pattern when Edward