Euro 96 £2 (1996)

Even well-worn football £2 coins sell for more than face value, because the single-metal £2 issues seldom stayed in circulation. Check the panel lines and the sixteen rings around the date, since softened detail there marks a worn coin, and look for scratches in the dished field. Brilliant uncirculated coins sell for more than circulated ones. A bright, unhandled coin with its original surface is worth the most.

With 5,141,350 struck for circulation, the Euro 96 £2 is the 31st rarest of the 44 ranked £2 designs and has the 107th 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 Gunpowder Plot £2, with 5,140,500 struck, and the next more common is the Shakespeare Histories £2, with 5,655,000 struck.

The tails side is one big football made of panels, with the date in the middle panel and a ring of sixteen small circles around it. The surface dips towards the centre rather than lying flat. The coin is all yellow with no separate centre, and the edge says TENTH EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP. No varieties of the circulation coin are recorded.

England hosted the tenth European Football Championship in 1996, and The Royal Mint struck this £2 to celebrate the tournament. Germany went on to lift the trophy, knocking out the hosts in the semi-finals on the way. John Mills, who had designed the Dove of Peace £2 the year before, filled the entire reverse with a stylised football drawn as a pattern of panels. The field of the coin is noticeably concave, which gives the ball a rounded look. The date sits in the central panel, split across two lines, and it is ringed by sixteen small circles, one for each team that took part. There is no other lettering on the design. The edge reads TENTH EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP, and Raphael Maklouf's portrait of the Queen is on the obverse. Struck in nickel-brass, this was the final single-metal commemorative £2 before the two-colour coin reached circulation in 1998.