Nations of the Crown £1 (2016 to 2022)

In circulated condition the Nations of the Crown £1 is a face-value coin. The later dates were struck in far smaller numbers: 2022, the last Elizabeth II year, is the lowest, and 2021 comes next, though more coins of both dates were released after a Royal Mint announcement in August 2025. Brilliant uncirculated and proof coins from Royal Mint sets sell above face. Varieties are where collectors look for more: the 2016 cross crosslet mint mark, errors such as an unplated centre, and the dual-dated coin.

With 1,753,082,905 struck for circulation, the Nations of the Crown £1 is the 26th rarest of the 26 ranked £1 designs and has the 184th lowest mintage of all 194 circulating UK designs. That puts it in the Common band, for mintages 10,000,000 or more.

No £1 design has a higher circulation mintage. The next rarer is the Royal Arms £1, with 623,304,510 struck.

Its lowest circulation mintage was in 2022, with 7,735,000 struck.

Look for four plants rising from a crown on a 12-sided, two-coloured coin: rose, leek, thistle and shamrock, with ONE POUND below. The date appears twice, on the heads side and in tiny lettering inside the reverse rim, and circulation dates run from 2016 to 2022 with Jody Clark's portrait. Some 2016 coins from the Royal Mint pack that paired this coin with the last round pound have a small cross crosslet under the left side of the crown. A gold-coloured centre, a partial collar strike or an off-centre inner section marks an error.

Known varieties of the Nations of the Crown £1, all listed among the UK error coins and varieties:

• Cross crosslet mint mark (2016): A small cross crosslet under the left side of the crown. It appears only on 2016 coins from the Royal Mint pack that paired the first 12-sided £1 with the last round pound; 9,850 were made.
• Edge milling orientation: Hold the coin with the portrait upright and the latent image at the bottom. Most coins have a milled section just right of the lowest point; a scarcer type has it just left. Found on 2016, 2017 and 2018 coins.
• Unplated inner: The whole coin is gold-coloured, with no silver-coloured nickel-plated centre, most likely because it missed the plating stage. One sold in August 2021.
• Strike errors: Partial collar strikes, and coins with the inner section out of line with the outer ring, are known in small numbers.

The main reason for replacing the round pound was forgery, as a rising share of the round pounds in circulation had turned out to be fakes. A public competition for the new coin's reverse opened in September 2014 and was won in March 2015 by David Pearce, a 15-year-old from Walsall, whose design the Chancellor, George Osborne, unveiled in his Budget. Pearce showed the rose of England, the leek of Wales, the thistle of Scotland and the shamrock of Northern Ireland growing from one stem and emerging from a royal coronet, with his initials DP under the right side of the crown. The coin was built to be hard to copy. It has twelve sides, like the old brass threepence, a gold-coloured nickel-brass ring around a silver-coloured centre, a latent image that switches between a £ sign and the number 1, micro-lettering inside the rim and a hidden security feature. The first coins were dated 2016 but entered circulation on 28 March 2017, and the round pound was withdrawn that October. It was struck for circulation every year until 2022, the last year of Elizabeth II.