50p Coins
The most collectable 50p since the Olympics?
A new commemorative coin has just entered circulation which could well become the most collected 50p since the Olympic series in 2012. Collectors all over the country are checking their change right now in an attempt to find the new 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games 50p.
The new Commonwealth Games 50p features a dynamic sporting design
Struck by The Royal Mint, this legal tender UK coin has been designed by Alex Loudon in the ‘arts and crafts’ style. Two athletes are intersected by the Scottish Saltire, and the words XX Commonwealth Games Glasgow fill the top right section of the surprisingly distinctive 50p.
But this coin has been attracting attention from collectors for another reason…
Collecting fever
In 2011 The Royal Mint issued a series of 29 different Olympic themed 50ps – one to represent each sport. With London 2012 around the corner, these coins suddenly became THE must-have collectables to commemorate the Games. Collectors still can’t resist flicking through their change to find the elusive last two or three coins they are missing.
A bag of 2014 Commonwealth Games 50ps, have you found one yet?
Now, 2 years on, the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games 50p looks set to become the next collecting sensation – as the race to find the first sports-themed British coin since the Olympics begins in earnest.
With the mintage figures as yet unconfirmed by The Royal Mint, this coin could well be the rarest of the lot, but only time will tell. Have you found yours yet?
How the Commonwealth Games started £2 Coin Collecting
In 2014 the Royal Mint struck a new circulating coin for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. But I can still remember back to the summer of 1986…
My father worked for a bank. He came home one evening with half a dozen coins in his hands. “I bet you don’t know what these are…”, he said. “They’re the new £2 coin. They’ve been released to celebrate the Commonwealth Games.”
The Royal Mint struck the circulation Commonwealth Games 50p on 25 May 2014
A new denomination for the UK
This was something genuinely new. The only “commemorative” coin in circulation was that slightly odd “hands” 50 pence that no-one really knew much about and there had only been two commemorative crowns issued in the last 20 years – both for Royal events.
The 1996 Commonwealth Games £2 coin changed the face of UK commemorative coins.
This was a brand new denomination and it commemorated a proper non-royal national event that really engaged the nation. Although the 1986 Commonwealth Game coin was largely kept by collectors and never really entered mass circulation, it marked a significant change in the UK’s commemorative coin issuing strategy.
Six more single-coloured commemorative £2 coins were struck over the next 10 years before the introduction of the fully circulating £2 denomination, which has now seen 50 different designs issued.
Of course, amongst those 50 coins are four coins from 2002 – again issued to celebrate the Commonwealth Games – this time held in Manchester. At first glance, you might struggle to spot the difference between them. They all feature the same running athlete trailing a banner behind. But each has a different cameo, representing each of the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom. Find out how to tell these coins apart here >>
Officially the UK’s rarest £2 coin
They are some of the scarcest £2 coins now in circulation, with even the largest mintage (Scotland) set at just 771,750 – just 17% of the first ever commemorative bimetallic £2 coin, which was issued for the Rugby World Cup in 1999.
The 2002 Commonwealth Games £2 coins are some of the rarest ever issued. Their mintage figures are shown below each design.
But the coin you really need to be looking out for is the Northern Ireland £2. Just 485,000 coins were ever struck making it officially the UK’s rarest £2 coin.
75% disappear from circulation
Of course, the 2014 Commonwealth Games coin is a 50p, rather than the previous £2 coins. But with the Royal Mint estimating that as many as 75% of all Olympic 50ps being kept by collectors, it’s definitely worth scouring your change for.
Own the Commonwealth Games coin that started £2 collecting
This coin is no longer in circulation, but we’re giving you the chance to own the UK 1986 Commonwealth Games £2 for your collection.
Do you own the UK’s rarest 50p piece? And it’s not Kew Gardens.
Have you heard about the 50p coin that many thousands of people have found in their daily pocket change which was sold on e-Bay for prices upward of £100.00. Or to put it another way, 200 times its actual value?!
Only 109,000 1992 EC 50p were issued into circulation – roughly half of the Kew Gardens 50p.
It was all because in 2014 The Royal Mint announced that the Kew Gardens 50p coin is the UK’s most scarce circulation coin, with just 210,000 pieces ever been placed into circulation. The result was a media storm and the inevitable overnight ramping of prices.
Half the circulation of the Kew Gardens 50p
But what few people realise is that there is an even rarer UK 50p piece that was issued in half the number of the Kew Gardens coin – just 109,000 coins.
The coin was issued in 1992 to mark the EC Single Market and the UK presidency of the Council of Ministers – perhaps not the most popular of topics, which maybe was the reason so very few were pushed out into circulation. But of course, its lack of popularity at the time, is the very thing that now makes it Britain’s rarest 50p coin.
Sadly, however hard you search, unlike the Kew Gardens 50p, you will not find this one in your change. That’s because it is one of the old-sized 50p coins that were demonetised in 1998.
The coin itself was designed by Mary Milner Dickens and pictures the UK’s place at the head of the Council of Ministers’ conference table. The stars represent each of the nations’ capital cities placed in their relative geographical position.
But it won’t be the coin’s clever design that will guarantee its numismatic interest for years to come. It is its status as the UK’s most rare circulation 50p is what will intrigue collectors and have them searching and saving up in years to come.
If you’re interested in coin collecting, our Change Checker web app is completely free to use and allows users to:
– Find and identify the coins in their pocket
– Collect and track the coins they have
– Swap their spare coins with other Change Checkers
Sign up today at: www.changechecker.org/app