Lion Rampant £1 (1994 and 1999)

A worn 1994 Lion Rampant pound is worth face value, because it was struck in large numbers for circulation. The version that interests collectors more is the 1999 coin, which never went into change and exists only from brilliant uncirculated and proof sets, so check the date first. Beyond that, condition decides: sharp detail on the mane and the fleurs-de-lis, and unmarked surfaces, lift a coin.

With 29,752,525 struck for circulation, the Lion Rampant £1 is the eleventh rarest of the 26 ranked £1 designs and has the 157th 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 Millennium Bridge £1, with 26,180,160 struck, and the next more common is the Egyptian Arch Bridge £1, with 38,938,000 struck.

The Lion Rampant £1 shows a single lion rearing up inside a double circle edged with small fleurs-de-lis, with ONE POUND beneath. Nothing else on a round pound looks like it: the 1997 coin has three walking lions with no border. Coins from change are dated 1994 and carry the Maklouf portrait, with the Queen in a diadem. A 1999 coin has the Rank-Broadley portrait and came from a collector set. The edge should read NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT.

After the plant emblems of 1984 to 1992, The Royal Mint gave the round £1 a heraldic theme for its second national series, and Scotland again came first, in 1994. The meetings that chose these designs were later described by the writer Julian Barnes in a New Yorker article of 1993. Norman Sillman, a British sculptor who received his first Royal Mint coin commission in 1956, for Bermuda, designed all four. His Scottish coin shows the lion rampant, standing on one hind leg with its forepaws raised and claws out. The lion has stood for the Scottish kingdom since King Alexander II used it in the thirteenth century. Around it runs a double tressure flory counter-flory, a narrow double ring set with fleurs-de-lis that point alternately outwards and inwards, and ONE POUND is lettered below. Raphael Maklouf's portrait is on the obverse. The edge reads NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT with the cross crosslet mint mark. When the design returned in 1999 it carried Ian Rank-Broadley's portrait and was struck only for collector sets.

The heraldic emblem set began with it, and the Dragon £1 followed in 1995.