S 10p: Stonehenge

Both dates of the S 10p went into change, so most examples are worn, and a worn Stonehenge 10p still sells for more than face value to collectors filling gaps in the alphabet. The 2019 date was struck in smaller numbers and usually commands more than the 2018. Condition decides the rest: a coin with clear outlines on the stones beats a scratched, dull one. Uncirculated coins sealed in their Royal Mint pouch or card sit above loose circulated coins.

With 304,000 struck for circulation, the S 10p (Stonehenge) 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 the standing stones of Stonehenge on the right, with a starburst of sunlight low on the left and a large S above it. The S is the only lettering on the tails side, so the stones are what tell you which coin you have. Turn it over for the date: it reads 2018 or 2019 after TEN PENCE in the legend around the Queen's portrait. Both years use exactly the same reverse, and no varieties of the S are recorded.

Stonehenge is the S in the Great British Coin Hunt, The Royal Mint's Quintessentially British A to Z of 10p reverses launched in 2018. Each of the 26 letters was paired with something typically British, and for S it picked the stone circle on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. The site began as a circular earthwork; the huge sarsens and the smaller bluestones that make up the circle seen today were raised later, and UNESCO added Stonehenge to its World Heritage list in 1986. The coin shows the stones on the right, including a trilithon of two uprights capped by a lintel, with a burst of sunlight breaking from behind a low stone on the left. A large capital S fills the upper left. The Royal Mint Team is credited with the reverse. Nothing on this side gives the value; TEN PENCE and the year appear on the obverse, around Jody Clark's fifth portrait of the Queen. Uncirculated Stonehenge coins went on sale on 1 March 2018, and a second batch dated 2019 followed on 26 February 2019.

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