Charles Darwin £2 (2009)

Circulated Darwin coins sell above face value, since fewer were struck than for many £2 designs of the period. Darwin's portrait and the chimpanzee's face are the raised focal points, so rubbing there is the first sign of wear. Scratches across the flat field between the two faces also lower the grade quickly. Brilliant uncirculated coins from Royal Mint packs fetch more, and a pack that is still sealed does better again.

With 3,903,000 struck for circulation, the Charles Darwin £2 is the 21st rarest of the 44 ranked £2 designs and has the 90th 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 £2 is the Trinity House £2, with 3,705,000 struck, and the next more common is the DNA Double Helix £2, with 4,299,000 struck.

A man in profile facing a chimpanzee across the centre of the coin marks this as the Darwin design. Above them, DARWIN sits between two dates, the second of them 2009, with raised dots between, and TWO POUNDS is at the bottom. The edge reads ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES followed by a date. The animal is a chimpanzee, even though many people call this the monkey coin. No varieties or errors of the Darwin coin are recorded.

Charles Darwin was the British naturalist who set out the theory of evolution by natural selection. His book On the Origin of Species argued that species change over many generations, and it caused fierce controversy because it challenged the accepted account of creation. The Royal Mint marked the bicentenary of his birth in 2009 with this £2 coin, designed by Suzie Zamit. Her reverse sets a profile portrait of Darwin on the left, facing right, directly opposite the face of a chimpanzee on the right, facing left. Above them, DARWIN sits between the year of his birth and 2009, with raised dots as separators, and TWO POUNDS runs below. The edge is lettered ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES with the year the book appeared. The coin has a cupro-nickel centre within a nickel-brass ring, and Ian Rank-Broadley's portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is on the obverse.