Royal Shield £1 (1988)

The 1988 Royal Shield is a one-year design with a smaller circulation mintage than most round pounds, but it is not a great rarity. Grade decides where a coin sits: the crown and the quarters of the shield lose detail quickly, so a coin with sharp heraldry sells well above a smooth one. The 1988 brilliant uncirculated pack coin is worth more again. Fake round pounds were widespread, and a crowned shield with the wrong date, a poorly formed edge inscription or sides that do not line up is not genuine.

With 7,118,825 struck for circulation, the Royal Shield £1 is the ninth rarest of the 26 ranked £1 designs and has the 126th lowest mintage of all 194 circulating UK designs. That puts it in the Uncommon band, for mintages 2,500,000 to 9,999,999.

The next rarer £1 is the Belfast £1, with 6,205,000 struck, and the next more common is the Millennium Bridge £1, with 26,180,160 struck.

A crowned shield standing alone, with ONE POUND beneath and no animals either side, marks the 1988 coin. The date on the heads side should read 1988, around Raphael Maklouf's portrait of the Queen in a diadem, and the edge reads DECUS ET TUTAMEN. Check the crown: Matthew Dent's shield of 2008 to 2016 has none and puts ONE and POUND on either side. A genuine crowned shield only carries the 1988 date, so any other date with this design points to a fake.

The round pound's designs ran in a cycle: a design for the United Kingdom, then one each for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England. After the first full cycle, the coin's sixth year brought a fresh United Kingdom design. Derek Gorringe drew the shield of the Royal Arms on its own, with a royal crown set above it and ONE POUND along the bottom. There are no supporters and no mottoes, unlike Eric Sewell's full arms of 1983. The heads side carries Raphael Maklouf's portrait of the Queen wearing the George IV State Diadem, the portrait used on the £1 from 1985 to 1997. Its edge repeats the first coin's Latin motto, DECUS ET TUTAMEN, along with a small cross crosslet for the Royal Mint. When the United Kingdom's turn came round again in 1993, the Royal Arms returned, leaving the crowned shield as a one-year design. It is easy to confuse with Matthew Dent's Royal Shield of 2008, but that later coin shows the shield without a crown and splits ONE POUND either side of it.