Commonwealth Games, Scotland £2 (2002)

Scotland's version is the most common of the four Commonwealth Games coins and the least expensive of the set, but a worn example from change still usually sells above face value. Condition makes the biggest difference: look for a clear saltire, crisp lines in the athlete and no heavy scratches across the ring. A coin whose flag has worn smooth is hard to tell from the England version, which puts buyers off. Brilliant uncirculated coins sell for more than any circulated one.

With 771,750 struck for circulation, the Commonwealth Games, Scotland £2 is the sixth rarest of the 44 ranked £2 designs and has the 34th lowest mintage of all 194 circulating UK designs. That puts it in the Rare band, for mintages 500,000 to 999,999.

The next rarer £2 is the Commonwealth Games, England £2, with 650,500 struck, and the next more common is the Olympic handover, London to Rio £2, with 845,000 struck.

Check the tiny flag to the left of the athlete. A diagonal cross running corner to corner, the saltire, marks the Commonwealth Games Scotland £2 coin. England's version has an upright cross instead, which is easy to mistake at a glance on a worn coin, so tilt it under a light. The Welsh coin carries a dragon, and the Northern Ireland coin the Ulster Banner. Everything else on the four coins is the same, including the SPIRIT OF FRIENDSHIP edge lettering and the Queen's portrait.

Scotland competed under its own flag when Manchester staged the XVII Commonwealth Games in 2002, and finished tenth in the medal table, one place behind Wales, with 30 medals, six of them gold. The Royal Mint struck a £2 for each of the four home nations that year, all sharing a single reverse by Matthew Bonaccorsi and differing only in the flag. Scotland's version shows the saltire of St Andrew, the diagonal cross, in a small roundel on the left of the design. The athlete in the middle is built from loose lines and lifts a banner high, and the banner runs out from the cupro-nickel centre across the nickel-brass ring, so the design spans both metals. The value £2 stands to the right, and the Games title in Roman numerals, XVII COMMONWEALTH GAMES 2002, curves along the ring on the right. SPIRIT OF FRIENDSHIP and MANCHESTER 2002 are lettered round the edge.

It was one of the four coins in the Commonwealth Games 2002 set issued in 2002.