Robert Burns £2 (2009)

A Burns £2 from change has usually seen years of handling, and worn, flattened script in the centre is what holds a circulated coin back. One that keeps crisp lettering and some of its original shine is the one collectors choose. The Royal Mint also sold the design in brilliant uncirculated quality in its own pack, a Burns celebration pack, the 2009 annual coin set and a baby gift set, and these fetch more than any coin from circulation, especially with the packaging intact.

With 3,253,000 struck for circulation, the Robert Burns £2 is the nineteenth rarest of the 44 ranked £2 designs and has the 85th 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 Guinea £2, with 2,990,000 struck, and the next more common is the Trinity House £2, with 3,705,000 struck.

The Robert Burns £2 has no picture at all: the silver-coloured centre is covered in joined-up handwriting, ending in the words auld lang syne. ROBERT BURNS runs across the top of the gold-coloured ring between two dates, and TWO POUNDS sits at the bottom. Check the edge for SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT. That lettering can read either way up relative to the Queen's head; it is not an error.

Robert Burns is widely held to be Scotland's national poet, and his birthday on 25 January is marked every year with Burns Night suppers. The Royal Mint issued this £2 in 2009 for the 250th anniversary of his birth. Instead of a portrait, the reverse uses the words of his best-known song, Auld Lang Syne, which is sung on New Year's Eve across the English-speaking world and which Burns wrote down from the singing of an old man. The line we'll tak a cup a' kindness yet, for auld lang syne fills the centre in a flowing handwritten script, which made it the first British coin design based solely on handwriting. The outer ring carries his birth and death years either side of ROBERT BURNS at the top, with TWO POUNDS at the bottom. The design is credited to The Royal Mint Engraving Team rather than a named artist, and it is paired with Ian Rank-Broadley's fourth portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. Another line from the same song, SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT, is pressed into the milled edge.