Every UK 50p Coin: Designs, Dates and Mintages

Find your 50p in under a minute

Turn the coin to the design side and match the picture to the table below. Most commemoratives were issued for one year only, so the design usually tells you the date before you look for it. Next, confirm the year and portrait on the other side, then compare the mintage with its neighbors.

Anything struck in the millions is a face value coin, even if it's a nice design. The ones that stand out sit in the low hundreds of thousands or around a million.

Circulating commemorative 50p coins

Everyday 50p designs

Collector-only 50p designs (never in circulation)

Why the 50p has seven sides

The 50p arrived in 1969 to replace the ten-shilling note. The Royal Mint wanted a coin nobody would mistake for another. The answer was a seven-sided shape with curved edges, known as an equilateral curve heptagon. Because the width is the same across any point, it rolls smoothly and works in vending machines just like a round coin.

The shape also makes it easy to recognize by touch. It worked so well that the 20p copied it in 1982.

The 1997 size reduction

The original 50p was big and heavy at 30 mm across. In 1997 the Royal Mint introduced the smaller 27.3 mm version used today. The large coins stopped being legal tender in 1998. That's why a large 50p only turns up in old jars and drawers now.

The 1994 D-Day Landings coin was the last commemorative in the large size. The first in the new size came in 1998, when the EU Presidency and NHS designs were issued.

How to read a 50p

• Portrait: tells you the era, from Machin through Maklouf, Rank-Broadley, Clark and Jennings for Charles III
• Date: look on the portrait side first; some commemoratives also carry anniversary dates in the design, such as 1992 and 1993 on the Single Market coin
• Inscription: NEW PENCE on coins up to 1981, FIFTY PENCE after that
• Design: Britannia was the standard design from 1969 to 2008, the Royal Shield from 2008 and the Atlantic salmon for Charles III
• Size: 30 mm means pre-1997, 27.3 mm means the current size

Commemoratives and collector-only coins

The first commemorative 50p, the 1973 EEC Hands by David Wynne, marked Britain joining the European Economic Community. Commemoratives stayed occasional until the 2000s, then exploded: the 2011 Olympic sports set added 29 designs in one year and the Beatrix Potter coins ran from 2016 to 2018.

Since 2018 many new designs, including The Snowman, The Gruffalo, Winnie the Pooh and the Innovation in Science coins, have been sold only in collector packs. They're listed separately below because you're unlikely to receive one in change.

The few 50p coins that matter

Out of all the circulating designs, only a handful were made in small enough numbers to get collectors excited. The old large 1992 Single Market coin had just 109,000, but among coins still legal tender the 2009 Kew Gardens leads with 210,000. Behind it sit the four scarcest Olympic sports, led by Football at 1,125,500, then the 2018 Peter Rabbit and Flopsy Bunny at 1,400,000 each and the 2017 Isaac Newton at 1,801,500.

Everything else ran to several million or more. The guide to rare 50p coins goes through these in detail and explains why online asking prices for them are so often wrong.

Frequently asked questions