UK Coins: A Guide to British Decimal Coinage

The short answer: which UK coins to look for

If you only check two coins, make them the 50p and the £2. The Royal Mint has used both for dozens of commemorative designs, some with mintages far below the usual run. The 2009 Kew Gardens 50p, with 210,000 made, is the one everybody has heard of. On the £2 side, the 1989 Claim of Right and the 2002 Commonwealth Games coins are the low-mintage names.

Everything else in British change, from the 1p to the £1, is almost always face value. Definitive designs were struck in the hundreds of millions.

From shillings to decimal

Before decimalization a pound was made of 20 shillings and each shilling of 12 pence, which made sums awkward. The changeover was phased in: the 5p and 10p arrived in 1968, sized to match the old shilling and florin so both could circulate together. The 50p followed in 1969 and replaced the ten-shilling note. On Decimal Day in 1971 the half penny, penny and two pence joined them.

Early coins read NEW PENCE. That word NEW was dropped in 1982, the same year the 20p appeared. The £1 coin came in 1983 and the two-metal £2 entered circulation in 1998. Several coins have been shrunk along the way: the 5p in 1990, the 10p in 1992 and the 50p in 1997.

The coins in circulation today

The half penny was withdrawn in 1984 and the round pound stopped being legal tender in October 2017, replaced by the 12-sided £1. That leaves eight coins in everyday use.

• 1p and 2p: copper-colored, made of copper-plated steel since 1992, so newer ones stick to a magnet
• 5p and 10p: silver-colored, in their smaller post-1990 sizes
• 20p and 50p: seven-sided, so they're easy to pick out by touch
• £1: the 12-sided two-metal coin introduced in 2017
• £2: a silver-colored center inside a gold-colored ring, with lettering on the edge

The Royal Mint and its portraits

Every UK coin is struck by the Royal Mint, which moved from London to Llantrisant in Wales starting in 1968. The portrait on the front is the quickest way to date a coin you can't read clearly.

• Arnold Machin: the first decimal portrait, used until 1984
• Raphael Maklouf: 1985 to 1997
• Ian Rank-Broadley: 1998 to 2015
• Jody Clark: 2015 to 2022, the last portrait of Elizabeth II
• Martin Jennings: King Charles III, first seen on the 2022 Queen Elizabeth II memorial 50p

Definitive designs: Britannia, the Royal Shield and Charles III

For most of decimal history each coin had one standard reverse. Christopher Ironside's designs, including the seated Britannia on the 50p, lasted until 2008. That year Matthew Dent's Royal Shield took over, split into pieces across the 1p to 50p so the full shield appears when you lay the coins together.

Coins for King Charles III use a new set of nature designs. The 50p shows an Atlantic salmon and the £2 shows the national flowers of the four nations, with a dormouse, a red squirrel and a puffin among the smaller coins.

Frequently asked questions