G 10p: Greenwich Mean Time

Condition matters on the Greenwich Mean Time 10p because the fine grid lines and coastlines wear away quickly, leaving a flat, dull globe. A coin with clear lines and a bright finish is worth more than a heavily worn one. A 2019 G is the better find, since its circulation run was a fraction of the 2018's and prices follow that. Coins still in the Royal Mint's cards, or bought loose in uncirculated quality, sit at the top of the range.

With 304,000 struck for circulation, the G 10p (Greenwich Mean Time) is the joint sixth rarest of the 30 ranked 10p designs and has the joint eighth lowest mintage of all 194 circulating UK designs. That puts it in the Very rare band, for mintages under 500,000.

The next rarer 10p is the Q 10p (Queuing), with 303,000 struck, and the next more common is the Capercaillie 10p, with 7,100,000 struck.

Its lowest circulation mintage was in 2019, with 84,000 struck.

The G 10p is the letter with a globe covering the whole tails side: a grid of latitude and longitude lines, coastlines on the right and a big G on the left. The globe side has no date. Flip the coin to find TEN PENCE and the year, 2018 or 2019, in the legend around Jody Clark's portrait of the Queen. Both years use the same globe, and the coin is otherwise a standard 10p.

G in the Royal Mint's 2018 alphabet stands for Greenwich Mean Time, the time set by the average solar day at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The Observatory has been Britain's reference point for time since the 17th century, and Parliament made GMT the official time towards the end of the 19th century. The engineer Sandford Fleming campaigned for a single worldwide 24-hour clock, and the International Meridian Conference later settled on a universal day that starts at Greenwich midnight. The Royal Mint's verse for the letter has everyone setting their watches by GMT, with plenty to see beyond the Meridian Line itself. The coin fills its whole field with a globe drawn in lines of latitude and longitude, with the coastlines of Europe and north Africa on the right and a marked line for the Greenwich Meridian. A large serif G stands in front on the left. The design is by The Royal Mint Team.

It was one of the 26 coins in the A to Z set issued in 2018.