Celtic Cross £1 (1996 and 2001)

The Celtic Cross pound was struck in very large numbers in both years, with 1996 the bigger issue, so worn coins are worth face value. Premiums are paid for brilliant uncirculated coins from Royal Mint sets and packs, where the knotwork and torc decoration are unworn. Because counterfeit round pounds circulated widely, collectors want a coin with sharp edge lettering reading DECUS ET TUTAMEN and both sides correctly aligned, the marks of a genuine strike.

With 153,854,065 struck for circulation, the Celtic Cross £1 is the 21st rarest of the 26 ranked £1 designs and has the 170th lowest mintage of all 194 circulating UK designs. That puts it in the Common band, for mintages 10,000,000 or more.

The next rarer £1 is the Dragon £1, with 144,000,001 struck, and the next more common is the Thistle £1, with 216,837,002 struck.

Its lowest circulation mintage was in 2001, with 63,968,065 struck.

The Celtic Cross £1 is easy to recognise: a cross with knotwork on its arms, a thick decorated ring lying over it, and a five-petalled flower in a small circle at the middle. It is the only heraldic round pound with ONE and POUND split either side of the design. Coins dated 1996 carry the Maklouf portrait; those dated 2001 carry Rank-Broadley's. One test for a counterfeit round pound is whether the design matches the date, so a coin dated 1996 or 2001 must show this cross.

Northern Ireland's heraldic round pound arrived in 1996, the third of Norman Sillman's four designs for the series. Instead of a single heraldic beast, Sillman combined three emblems. At the centre is a Celtic cross, its arms filled with interlaced knotwork, with a ring at the crossing that frames a small pimpernel flower. Laid over the whole cross is a torc modelled on the Broighter collar, a gold neck ring found in the 1890s among a hoard of Iron Age gold objects near Lough Foyle and regarded as a masterpiece of Irish La Tène metalwork. The collar's two decorated ends meet at the foot of the cross. The cross's lower arm runs down to the rim and splits the inscription, so ONE sits at the lower left and POUND at the lower right, the only design in the heraldic set laid out this way. The obverse has Raphael Maklouf's portrait. A second striking followed in 2001, by then with Ian Rank-Broadley's portrait, and both dates have DECUS ET TUTAMEN on the edge.

In the heraldic emblem set it followed the Dragon £1 of 1995 and came before the Three Lions £1 of 1997.