RAF Spitfire £2 (2018)

No Spitfire £2 coins were struck for circulation, so every one was sold in brilliant uncirculated quality or another collector edition. More Spitfire coins were sold than of any other aircraft design in the series, and it tends to cost less than the Vulcan, Sea King or Lightning II. Presentation affects the price: coins still sealed in their original pack sell for more than loose ones, and handling marks across the wings of the large Spitfire lower it.

The RAF Spitfire £2 was not issued for circulation, so it has no rarity rank.

Count the aircraft: the Spitfire coin shows three of them, and the biggest reaches out of the centre into the outer ring at the bottom. The word SPITFIRE climbs the left-hand side of the ring, with RAF at the top. The other fighter in the series, the Lightning II, is a single modern jet seen from the front, so the two are easy to separate.

R J Mitchell designed the Supermarine Spitfire, and it first flew in 1936. Powered by a Rolls-Royce engine and known for its elliptical wings, it came to symbolise the air fighting over Britain during the Second World War. When The Royal Mint marked a hundred years of the Royal Air Force in 2018, the Spitfire was the second design in the series and the first of the aircraft coins by the brothers Richard and Neil Talbot, who went on to draw every plane in the set. Rather than a single fighter, the Talbots show a formation of three. The largest flies across the bottom of the coin and breaks out into the brass ring, a second crosses the centre, and a smaller third flies at the upper right. The inscription reads clockwise: SPITFIRE rises up the left side, RAF sits across the top and 1918-2018 runs down the right towards the bottom.

It was one of the five coins in the RAF centenary set issued in 2018.