N 10p: NHS

The NHS 10p sells for more than many letters in the set. Condition still sets the price: the thin stethoscope tubing and the textured N lose definition with wear, and a bright, unmarked coin is worth more. Its 2019 version, released in much smaller numbers, sells above the 2018. Uncirculated coins from Royal Mint cards and pouches sit above those found in change.

With 304,000 struck for circulation, the N 10p (NHS) 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.

Look for a stethoscope whose tubing bends into a heart beside a large N, with the chest piece near the top right. Apart from the letter itself, the tails side is free of words and numbers. For the date, read the words around the Queen on the heads side; they finish TEN PENCE 2018 or TEN PENCE 2019.

N in the Royal Mint's Quintessentially British A to Z goes to the National Health Service, and the letter's verse places the health service at the heart of the country. The NHS opened in 1948, and the Royal Mint sets out the three principles behind it: care for everyone who needs it, no charge when that care is given, and treatment decided by clinical need rather than by what a patient can pay. The coin came out in 2018, seventy years after the service began. On the coin, a stethoscope loops around a large textured N, its tubing curving into a heart shape to the right of the letter, with the earpieces at the lower left and the chest piece at the top right. The Royal Mint names the design NHS on its 2018 silver proof and National Health Service on its 2019 uncirculated coin, and credits it to The Royal Mint Team.

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