Coin Collector

2010 - Celebrating 100 Years of Girlguiding UK 2009 - 250th anniversary of the foundation of the Royal Botanic Gardens Mintage: 210,000 Approx. value: £80 Mintage: 7,410,090 Approx. value: £1.50 The Kew Gardens 50p coin was issued in 2009 to mark the ‘250th anniversary of the foundation of the Royal Botanic Gardens’. The design, by Christopher Le Brun, features a pagoda encircled by a vine and the dates 1759 and 2009, and the word ‘KEW’. Collector notes The Kew Gardens 50p coin, issued in 2009, is the rarest UK 50p circulation coin due to the low mintage by The Royal Mint. The coin commands prices around 160 times the face value of the coin, and regularly sells on eBay for up to £100. The exact value varies but is said to be around £80. Buyer beware! Other ‘uncirculated’ editions of the Kew Gardens coins are available and are not as rare as the circulation coins. Make sure any coin you purchase is the circulation version. There were 128,364 brilliant uncirculated Kew Gardens 50p coins produced and 34,438 UK proof sets featuring an uncirculated version of the coin. There are many other British coins that are scarcer than the Kew Gardens 50p, but they are no longer in circulation, and so you won’t ever find one in your everyday change. The Kew Gardens 50p is therefore Britain’s rarest circulation coin. Three years after the Boy Scouts were celebrated on a 50p, the Girlguiding received the same honour. The memorable design is one you may well have spotted in your loose change, featuring a circle of the girlguiding logo with another logo in the middle. The coin was designed by Jonathan Evans and Donna Hainan and so there are two sets of initials on the coin’s design. Collector notes This example is a nice one to add to your collection and cheap to buy. We’d suggest looking out for it in your change or doing a swap with a fellow collector. Silver proof versions are priced at around £25, whilst the gold proof versions command a price of at least £900! This is another intricate and unusual design that will really enhance your 50p collection. The design features fifty animals, with the World Wildlife Fund panda right in the middle. Collector notes The WWF 50p is a lovely coin and has a relatively low mintage, so you may have to pay a little more than other designs. You can grab a copy for under our £3 valuation but the price does fluctuate and sometimes the price is a little higher. Christopher Ironside designed the UK’s first decimal coins, and this special 50p was issued to mark what would have been his 100th birthday. The coin features a design by Ironside that never actually made it onto a British coin. Back in 1969 it was his Britannia design that adorned the 50p and the Royal Arms shown on this 2013 coin was one of the proposed designs that didn’t meet final approval. According to the Royal Mint, the design was ‘liked so much by members of The Royal Mint Advisory Committee that trial pieces of the design were made and the hope was expressed that a use might be found for it.’ All those years later, the artwork got its chance to shine, though there is one subtle change, the words ‘NEW PENCE’, seen in the original design, now read ‘FIFTY PENCE’. Collector notes Beware any sellers who may call this coin ‘rejected’. Of course, the 2013 coin does feature a design that was originally rejected, but it doesn’t mean you’ve got a rarity on your hands or that this ‘Royal Arms’ version has somehow been issued by mistake. With a high-ish mintage, the coin is not very rare. 2011 - Celebrating 50 years of the work of WWF Mintage: 3,400,000 Approx. value: £3 2013 - Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Christopher Ironside Mintage: 7,000,000 Approx. value: £1.50 Want to know about the 28 different London Olympics 50p issued in 2012? See our dedicated guide on the website… More Olympics 50p info and advice at: www.allaboutcoins.co.uk 2012 OLYMPICS - 28 COINS