Comment by bruce511

It would have been nigh impossible to keep it a secret. Locally your sovereign would find about it very quickly. So you're working gorgeous the crown in a short order.

Operational security was also terrible, so it wouldn't have been kept as a secret limited to one country for long.

If you want to profit from making gold, you have to spend gold, and that's going to get noticed very fast. Its not like the common man was spending gold coins on a regular basis.