Posts Tagged ‘Coins’
A history of Sir Winston Churchill on UK coins
The 9th April marks National Winston Churchill Day, a moment to reflect on and celebrate one of the most iconic figures in British history. In honour of National Winston Churchill Day, let’s take a look at the man who led Britain to victory in World War II and the UK coins that he features on.
Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
Who was Sir Winston Churchill?
Sir Winston Churchill was a British statesman and leader, known for his role as Prime Minister during the Second World War. However he was a man of many talents, serving in the British army from 1895 to 1899, creating over 500 oil paintings and even winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his mastery of historical and biographical descriptions.
Image Credit: Public Domain, Via Wikimedia Commons
Churchill has been celebrated for his leadership, speeches, and contributions to British and global history, so it’s only fitting that he features on several UK coins.
1965 Churchill Crown
In 1965 shortly after his death, Churchill became the first person outside of the Royal family to be commemorated on a British coin, making numismatic history. The nation mourned the loss of one of the best loved Prime Ministers, and his 90 year life was honoured with a state funeral in London, the first afforded to a ‘commoner’ in more than a century!
The reverse design features a sombre-looking head and shoulders portrait of Churchill wearing a ‘siren suit’ – overalls designed to be worn in wartime air-raid shelters, invented and popularised by Churchill.
2010 Olympic Churchill £5
After a 45 year hiatus, Winston Churchill returned to UK coins in 2010 when The Royal Mint issued a limited edition £5 coin celebrating the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The coin featured an instantly recognisable depiction of the Winston Churchill statue in Parliament Square, along with the London 2012 logo and a quote from British businesswoman, Anita Roddick. The quote reads “Be daring, be first, be different, be just”, capturing the spirit of pride in our nation.
2015 Winston Churchill £5
To mark 50 years since Churchill’s death, The Royal Mint issued a new £5 coin in 2015, heavily inspired by the 1965 Churchill Crown.
One of the UK’s finest portrait sculptors, Mark Richards FRBS, wanted to create a design on the 2015 Winston Churchill £5 conveying Churchill as larger than life, and so used an engraving larger than the coin itself.
2024 Winston Churchill £2
The most recent coin to feature Winston Churchill was issued as part of the 2024 Annual Set and marks 150 years since his birth.
The 2024 Winston Churchill £2 depicts him as a young man during his time in the Cavalry army, with the years of his life 1874-1965 either side of his portrait.
As the first UK £2 coin to feature Churchill, this coin sparked much excitement amongst collectors and interestingly, it wasn’t individually released. This means that the only way for collectors to get their hands on it is by securing the 2024 Annual Coin Set.
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The rare penny worth £72,000!
Do you ever pay attention to the pennies in your change? Well, you might want to take a closer look at your coppers in future, because one particular 1p coin could be worth an astonishing sum!
The 1933 George V Penny is one of the rarest and most sought-after coins in British numismatic history. Despite having a face value of just 1p, this elusive coin has fetched staggering prices at auction. In 2016, an example sold for an incredible £72,000! And its value has been climbing for years – with sales recorded at £40,000 in 2004 and £45,000 in 2006.
Image credit: The Royal Mint Museum
Why is this coin so rare?
During the 1930s, there was such an abundance of pennies already in circulation that no new ones needed to be struck, however a few were still produced for ceremonial purposes. According to the Royal Mint, no official records exist confirming how many 1933 pennies were struck, but seven are known to exist.
Of the known 1933 pennies, one is located in the Royal Mint Museum, one belongs to the British Museum, two are in private collections and one was placed under the foundations the Senate House of the University of London by King George. One was placed under the foundation stone of Church of St Cross in Leeds, but was stolen in 1970 during reconstruction, its whereabouts now unknown. To avoid further thefts, the coin placed under St Mary’s Church in Leeds was dug up and sold, however it’s thought the one underneath Senate House remains in place.
Image Credit: philld / Mount St Mary’s Leeds via Wikimedia Commons
This makes the chances of finding a 1933 Penny in your change almost impossible. But don’t worry if you don’t have one in your collection, as there are plenty of other coins that could still be worth a small fortune…
Fetching a fortune
1983 2p
After the 2p coin design was changed in 1982 to read TWO PENCE instead of NEW PENCE, a few coins were mistakenly struck in 1983 using the old reverse die and therefore have the old inscription of NEW PENCE.
Image Credit: RWB Auctions
It’s not known how many of these coins made their way into circulation, but in 2024, one sold for a whopping £1,000!
Undated 20p
In 2008, the reverse of each denomination from 1p to £1 was redesigned by Matthew Dent to feature a different part of the Royal Arms Shield. The 20p had previously included the date on the reverse, but with the entire face of the coin now devoted to the new design, the Royal Mint produced a new die with the date on the obverse (Queen’s head) side.
However, when the new Royal Shield 20p coins were struck for circulation, the old die was accidentally used, meaning a batch was issued with no date on either side of the coin.
Back in 2008 when this ‘error’ was discovered, one lucky seller sold theirs for a colossal £7,100! Nowadays, an undated 20p fetches around £60 on the secondary market, which is still not a bad return on a 20p coin!
Proceed with caution
Before you get too excited, it’s important to remember that a coin’s condition plays a huge role in determining its value. Coins in perfect condition can be worth far more than their well-worn, damaged, and poor-condition counterparts, and sometimes a minor difference in grade translates to hundreds or even thousands in value!
So, next time you’re checking your change, take a closer look! Who knows? You might just discover a hidden gem worth more than you ever imagined!
Kick start your Penny collection
Whether you’ve got a penny collection already or you’re just starting out, you can piece together a fascinating timeline showing the changing face of Her Majesty with the Queen Elizabeth II Portraits Penny Collecting Page.
The scarcest coins in circulation revealed! Your Scarcity Index Update
So you think you’ve found a rare coin in your change, but how do you know how scarce it really is? Well, mintage figures only tell part of the story…
Our Scarcity Index uses data from the Change Checker Swap Centre to determine just how scarce and sought-after your coins are. The information is presented in the easy-to-use indexes below, with arrows to signify how many places up or down a coin has moved since the last Scarcity Index update.
Last time, we saw 2 new 50p coins enter the index as their mintage figures were revealed, so let’s see where they’re at now…
50p Scarcity Index
Since our last update, there’s been a lot of movement on the 50p index, with all but 8 coins moving at least 1 place.
The latest additions to the 50p index – the 2023 Salmon 50p and the 2023 Coronation 50p – remain towards the bottom of the list. Despite the 2023 Salmon 50p overtaking the Kew Gardens 50p as the rarest 50p in circulation with a mintage of just 200,000, this actually means that collectors will be less likely to want to part with it, so very few swaps have taken place.
When the Kew Gardens 50p first entered circulation, it wasn’t known just how rare it was and so collectors were happy to swap or spend it if they came across one in their change. It wasn’t until later that it was announced that only 210,000 Kew Gardens 50ps went into circulation, and this is when they began to stay put in collections.
Our Scarcity Index combines a coin’s mintage figure with how many of each design are listed as “collected” by Change Checkers on our Web App, indicating the relative ease of finding a particular coin, and the number of times a design has been requested as a swap on our Swap Centre over the previous 3 months, showing the current level of collector demand. This helps us determine the true scarcity of a coin, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the rarity still lies solely with the mintage figure. As you can see from the mintage chart below, the 2023 Salmon 50p and the 2009 Kew Gardens 50p have significantly smaller mintages than the next rarest coins, meaning they’re still the hardest to come by in the wild.
Some of the biggest movers on the 50p index are the Olympic Handball 50p which has gone up by 18 places, putting it in 6th place, the Team GB 50p which shot up by 16 places and both the Mrs Tiggy Winkle 50p and Paddington at the Tower of London 50p have climbed 13 places.
The top 8 places on the 50p index (underneath the Kew Gardens 50p) are usually reserved for Olympic 50ps, with them regularly shuffling around. However this time, it looks like the Football 50p has snuck into second place – understandable considering it’s the rarest of the Olympic 50ps with a mintage of just 1,125,500!
There’s also been significant downwards movement within the 50ps, with the Representation of the People Act 50p falling a whopping 19 places, the Olympic Basketball 50p going down 18 places and the Olympic Table Tennis 50p dropping 10 places. Also moving down the index are the Hockey 50p, the Boccia 50p and the Rowing 50p, which have all fallen 9 places.
If you’re new to collecting and want to find out more about circulation coins, you can check out our fact files here >>
Otherwise, keep reading to find out which 10ps and £2 coins you should be looking out for.
10p Scarcity Index
The 10p index has had a huge shakeup since our last update, with all but 1 coin – the S for Stonehenge 10p – moving!
The biggest change on our 10p index are the two coins that are now in last and second to last place. The U for Union Jack 10p and the X for X Marks the Spot 10p fell by 22 and 24 places respectively, putting them right at the bottom of the list, closely followed by the P for Postbox 10p which slid down 19 places.
The V for Villages 10p dropped 12 places and the O for Oak 10p moved down 17 places, all to make room for others that have been steadily shuffling up the list. Moving up the list is the R for Robin 10p which climbed 14 places to the number 2 spot and the D for Double Decker Bus 10p which rose by 9 places.
Collectors will agree that the A-Z 10ps are some of the hardest commemorative coins to come across in circulation – that’s not surprising when you consider a maximum of JUST 304,000 of each A-Z 10p design entered circulation across 2018 and 2019 and it’s thought that a large percentage of these 10ps have been snapped up by collectors.
*Note
It’s worth remembering that our Scarcity Index only ranks the 10ps against each other, so even the ones at the bottom of the list are still incredibly sought-after.
£2 Scarcity Index
Due to the fact that no new commemorative £2 coins have entered circulation since 2016, we generally see less movement on the £2 index, however there are 1 or 2 coins that have made surprising moves.
Since our last Scarcity Index Update, we’ve seen no movement in the top 2 coins on the £2 index, with the 2002 Northern Ireland Commonwealth Games £2 remaining in 1st place and the 2002 England Commonwealth Games £2 in 2nd place. The four Commonwealth Games £2 coins that were issued in 2002 are among the rarest in circulation due to their extremely low mintage, and take up two thirds of the top 6 rarest £2 coins (according to mintage figures).
The biggest mover is the Brunel Portrait £2 which has climbed an impressive 10 places, putting it in the highest position it’s been in the last 5 years!
Other notable changes are the First World War Kitchener £2 which has dropped 8 places, the Shakespeare Tragedies £2 which fell by 7 places and the Florence Nightingale £2 which shot up 6 places.
How our Scarcity Index works
In the past, collectors have relied on mintage figures alone to identify the scarcest coins. But they only tell part of the story.
That’s why we’ve combined the mintage information with two other key pieces of information:
- How many of each design are listed as “collected” by Change Checkers on our Web App, indicating the relative ease of finding a particular coin
- The number of times a design has been requested as a swap on our Swap Centre over the previous 3 months, showing the current level of collector demand.
Importantly, as new coins are released and popularity rises and falls across different designs, the Scarcity Index will be updated quarterly. This allows Change Checkers to track the relative performance of the UK’s circulation coins.
How much are my coins worth?
The Scarcity Index doesn’t necessarily equate to value, but it is certainly a good indicator. You can use our 6 point guide to help you determine a more realistic value for your coins.
What about £1 Coins?
The £1 Scarcity Index has already been published for the Round £1 coins. Because they are no longer being issued, this is now set in stone.
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