Confirmed: A new Edith Cavell £5 Coin
The Royal Mint have confirmed that next year they will honour the life of wartime heroine Edith Cavell on a new £5 which commemorates the centenary of her death during World War One.
The announcement comes after pressure from relatives of Cavell who recently submitted a petition with over 100,000 names to Her Majesty’s Treasury in a passionate appeal for her to be included in any First World War commemorative plans.
A sense of injustice has been felt ever since Lord Kitchener was revealed as the face of the new 2014 £2 coin. Critics have branded his ‘Your Country Needs You’ message as jingoistic, and completely juxtaposed to the bravery of Edith Cavell who sacrificed her life to help around 200 allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium.
The face of a wartime heroine
Our blog on a possible Edith Cavell £2 coin earlier in the year included a poll which offered you the choice between the Lord Kitchener £2 and our artist’s impression of an Edith Cavell £2, featuring her portrait and famous last words “Patriotism is not enough”.
The Times have mistakenly believed our artist’s impression to be the new Edith Cavell £5 coin
The result: Edith Cavell and our artist’s interpretation of her commemorative £2 coin triumphed.
In fact, it was such a well-received design that the Times have picked it up in their editorials and mistakenly believed it to be the new design for the £5 coin next year!
A fitting tribute
It remains to be seen whether the new 2015 £5 coin will bear any resemblance to our mocked-up version, but whatever the design, it will be a well-deserved tribute and justified recognition of a wartime nurse who made the ultimate sacrifice to help others.
When will I ever find a 2014 coin in my change?
Waiting for information about when you will find the new year’s commemorative coins in your change can be a frustrating time for Change Checkers. But the Royal Mint has finally released some details about when you can expect to find the 2014 coins in your change.
The Royal Mint started striking the circulation Commonwealth Games 50p on 25 May.
We already reported that the Royal Mint started striking the 2014 Commonwealth Games 50p coin on the 25 May, to coincide with the Queen’s Baton Relay visiting the Mint. As anticipated, the Mint has now confirmed that you should begin to see the circulation 50p in your change from around the start of the Games in mid-July. It is expected that approximately 5 million coins will enter circulation over the rest of the year.
So what of the £2 coins? Well it seems that the Royal Mint’s stocks are still quite high, with more 2013 London Underground coins still working they way through the banking system. That means that the £2 Kitchener coin won’t be hitting our pockets until the Autumn, with the Trinity House coin following on behind.
The £2 First World War Kitchener coin is not scheduled until the Autumn
Fortunately, you won’t have to wait quite so long for the Scottish and Northern Irish floral emblems £1 coins, which are slated for the end of the summer (we guess that probably means September). Again it looks likely that will be around 5 million of each design struck.
As for the circulation version of the Queen Anne £5 coin, sadly the Royal Mint has not issued face-value circulation £5 coins through banks and post offices since the Restoration Anniversary coin in 2010.
So if you want a 2014 commemorative coin, you still have a few weeks to wait. But if you’re simply looking for a new shiny 2014 coin of any denomination, check your 5 and 10 pence pieces. That’s because high metal prices have seen the Royal Mint busy collecting in the old cupro-nickel coins to replace them with the less expensive nickel-plated steel versions.
Can’t wait for the 2014 coins to enter circulation?
Buy the brilliant uncirculated versions in their official Royal Mint presentation packs and pay no postage and packing – click here>
You don’t have to love football to love this £2 coin…
Have you seen this coin before? It’s the only time the UK has ever had a football themed commemorative £2 coin, but you won’t find one in your change…
As World Cup fever grips the nation once again , it reminds me of Euro ’96 when all anybody could eat, drink and breathe was football-related.
This £2 was struck by the Royal Mint in 1996 ‘In Celebration of Football’
It was such a significant occasion that the Royal Mint even issued a £2 coin “in celebration of football”. Remember, this was back in the days when commemorative coins were rare, and struck mainly for collectors. Just the concept of celebrating a sporting event was unusual – the only coin to have done so prior to this was the 1986 Commonwealth Games £2.
But for such a historic event, a historic coin was needed, and this one did not disappoint.
The first of its kind…and last of its kind
The design of the 1996 £2 coin is attention-grabbing, with the distinctive pattern of a football adorning the reverse. It is also the first and only UK coin to feature a concave or bowl-shaped surface, which adds a convincing three-dimensional illusion to the design.
The coin is renowned for its unique concave surface, which gives the design a 3-D appearance.
Significantly, this coin was also the last of its type and the following year, the bi-metallic £2 coin which is now so familiar to Change Checkers, was introduced.
You don’t need to be a coin fanatic to appreciate the appeal which a coin like this holds for a collector. Neither for that matter do you need to be a football fan to understand what a memento this is for a lover of the game. Euro’96 was the closest England have come to winning a tournament for years, and it was a time when genuine optimism in the national team was infectious rather than the subject of mockery.
Time will tell how England will fare this time around, but let’s hope they can quietly rekindle that passion which swept over the country back in 1996!
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
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– Swap their spare coins with other Change Checkers
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