Claim of Right £2 (1989)

As the scarcest £2 of the single-metal era, the Claim of Right coin sells well above its Bill of Rights twin in every grade. Wear still matters a great deal: a coin with a crisp crown, clear letters in the cypher and an unmarked mace is worth noticeably more than a tired one. Brilliant uncirculated examples sit at the top of the range, and the proof versions sold to collectors are priced separately.

With 381,400 struck for circulation, the Claim of Right £2 is the rarest of the 44 ranked £2 designs and has the 29th lowest mintage of all 194 circulating UK designs. That puts it in the Very rare band, for mintages under 500,000.

No £2 design has a lower circulation mintage. The next more common is the Commonwealth Games, Northern Ireland £2, with 485,500 struck.

Check the wording round the top of the coin: it must read CLAIM OF RIGHT. If it says BILL OF RIGHTS, you have the far more common English and Welsh coin. The crown over the cypher is the Crown of Scotland, which is the only other change between the two. Both share the W and M cypher over a mace, two stacked dates, a plain milled edge and the Maklouf portrait, so the inscription is the quickest test.

The Claim of Right is Scotland's counterpart to the Bill of Rights, and both date from the same year in the late seventeenth century, when William and Mary came to the throne. When the two reached their tercentenary in 1989, The Royal Mint issued a pair of £2 coins, and this is the one made for Scotland. John Lobban adapted his design for it by changing two things. The crown above the interlaced W and M of King William and Queen Mary becomes the Crown of Scotland, and the words round the rim read TERCENTENARY OF THE CLAIM OF RIGHT. Everything else follows the English coin. The cypher rests on a horizontal parliamentary mace, the year of the Claim and 1989 are set one above the other beneath it, and the inscription starts at the lower left, arches over the top and stops at the lower right. Struck in nickel-brass, the coin has a milled edge with no lettering and Raphael Maklouf's portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the other side.

In the Bill of Rights set it was issued in 1989 together with the Bill of Rights £2.