Shakespeare Comedies £2 (2016)

The jester £2 went into general circulation in large numbers, so a coin from change is worth face value. It had the smallest circulation run of the three Shakespeare designs, but the gap is not wide enough to lift circulated prices. Collectors pay more for brilliant uncirculated coins from Royal Mint packs, and a sealed pack is worth more than a loose coin with handling marks on the bells.

With 4,355,000 struck for circulation, the Shakespeare Comedies £2 is the 23rd rarest of the 44 ranked £2 designs and has the 92nd 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 DNA Double Helix £2, with 4,299,000 struck, and the next more common is the Bill of Rights £2, with 4,392,825 struck.

The jester's cap with its bells, laid across a jester's stick, marks the Comedies coin. All three Shakespeare £2 coins share the legend WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE and the 2016 date, so the picture in the centre is what counts: a crown pierced by a dagger belongs to the Histories coin, and a skull with a rose to the Tragedies. The edge of the jester coin reads ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE.

For the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death in 2016, The Royal Mint issued three £2 coins, one for each kind of play he wrote: the comedies, the histories and the tragedies. All three are the work of John Bergdahl, who gave each genre a single object in place of a portrait of the playwright. For the comedies he turned to the costume of the fool. A jester's cap and bells lies across a marotte, the prop stick topped with a carved head that jesters carried, with ribbons trailing from it. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE runs around the outer ring, and 2016 sits at the bottom between two flowering sprigs. The edge is lettered ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE, from As You Like It, and Jody Clark's fifth portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is on the obverse. Brilliant uncirculated versions of the three designs went on sale from 5 November 2015, ahead of the anniversary year.

It was one of the three coins in the Shakespeare set issued in 2016.