Marconi £2 (2001)

A Marconi £2 from change trades at face value, since it was issued for circulation in large numbers. The Royal Mint sold brilliant uncirculated coins from June 2001 in dedicated packs and in sets, and those are what collectors pay more for, particularly when still sealed. On a loose coin, the fine arcs of the radio waves lose their sharpness with wear, and scratches across the flat silver centre are easy to see, so both lower the grade.

With 4,558,000 struck for circulation, the Marconi £2 is the 26th rarest of the 44 ranked £2 designs and has the 95th 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 Dove of Peace £2, with 4,394,566 struck, and the next more common is the Shakespeare Tragedies £2, with 4,615,000 struck.

The design looks like a signal going out: a small disc with the date on the left of the silver centre, a spark joining its two zeros, and arcs of radio waves spreading to the right and over the gold-coloured ring. TWO POUNDS sits at the bottom. The edge inscription names Marconi and the Atlantic. Technology £2 coins also carry the 2001 date, so go by the waves, not the year. No varieties of the Marconi coin have been recorded.

In 1901 the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi sent a radio signal from Poldhu in Cornwall to Newfoundland, the first wireless transmission across the Atlantic Ocean. Many had believed the curve of the earth would stop a signal travelling anywhere near that far. The message itself was only the Morse code for the letter S, but it made Marconi famous, and he received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1909. For the centenary in 2001, Robert Evans designed a reverse built around a transmission. The date 2001 sits in a small disc at the left of the centre, and a spark of electricity jumps between its two zeros to represent the signal being generated. Radio waves spread from it to the right in widening arcs across the centre and on round the outer ring. TWO POUNDS is at the bottom of the outer ring. The edge reads WIRELESS BRIDGES THE ATLANTIC...MARCONI 1901... and Ian Rank-Broadley's portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is on the obverse.