The King of The Counterfeiters

Large scale minting of the British gold sovereign for circulation ceased in the London Mint in 1917. The six branch mints carried on making relatively small numbers of the coin for some time after the 1917 date. The Pretoria Mint in South Africa then made the last branch mint gold sovereign coins in 1932.
The drying up of supply of British gold sovereign coins, along with an unsatisfied demand, led to the price of a British gold sovereign coin rising to much more than just the price of the gold it contained.
London’s Evening Standard newspaper reported, in 1952, that although the nominal value of the gold sovereign was one pound (£1) or twenty shillings, it contained £2 and 18 shillings worth of gold but it sold on the continental markets for between £4 and £10.
By the end of World War II time, the British gold sovereign coin had been completely replaced in every day use in the United Kingdom by bank notes. However in many areas of the world such as Greece, India and the Middle East, the British gold sovereign coin was still in great demand as a reliable store of value in an uncertain world.
This imbalance of supply and demand was to be exploited by a number of counterfeiters in the late 1940’s and into the 1950’s. However, one of the counterfeiters stands out, Jose Bertha Zdravko. Beraha, as he was known, outdid the British Royal Mint.