In 1973 Rupert Murdoch made his first investment into the U.S. market by purchasing the San Antonia Express News. He Moved New York the following year, setting up his own tabloid the Star, and in 1976 purchasing the New York Post. On September 4th 1985, Murdoch became a US citizen in order to bypass FCC regulations capping foreign investors from owning more than 25% of a US television network. This decision would go on to further undermine his popularity among the British people, John Lancashire describing the move as shameless in a 2004 London Review of Books article.
By the turn of the 21st century, the royal mint began to more frequently release commemorative coins into circulation, having released only a handful in the 20th century. In 2006, Kelvin Mackenzie, editor of the Sun 1981-1994, and close friend of Murdoch privately commissioned designs to be made for the first quadruple set of commemorative fifty pence pieces. Intended as a gift to cement Murdoch within British culture, the set was to display Murdochs four newspapers, each coin inscribed with a famous headline from each title. Due to the controversial nature of many of the Sun and the News of The World headlines, the Royal Mint repeatedly rejected Mackenzies designs. Talks began to further break down in 2009, in the wake of the Guardian's piece exposing News UK's legal settlements with phone hacking victims. By 2011, at the peak of the phone hacking scandal, the News of The World was shut down, destroying any hopes of a quadruple coin set, ending Mackenzie's project.
The proposed designs of the coins were never made public, however at the beginning of the project Mackenzie had commissioned a handmade oak display box, an intended gift to Murdoch upon completion of the project. The box remained with Mackenzie until 2017, when he was sacked by News Corp due to backlash from a racist column he had written in the Sun. Friends of Stereotype recovered the box during the clear out of his News UK office. Only a year later, across 2018 and 2019, the first quadruple set of 50p coins was released. Minor changes to the lining of the box were made by Tony Cappi to suit the display of these news coins.