Sir Walter Scott £2 (2021)

The Walter Scott £2 was never struck for circulation, so buyers are choosing between brilliant uncirculated coins from packs and the annual set, and the silver and gold proofs. Because the design is mostly lettering, marks show clearly on the flat fields between the words, and any scratch across the name lowers the grade. The piedfort and gold proof are separate, scarcer issues with their own prices.

The Sir Walter Scott £2 was not issued for circulation, so it has no rarity rank.

This £2 is mostly lettering. SIR WALTER SCOTT is spread across the centre in large decorative script over three lines, and the words NOVELIST HISTORIAN POET sit stacked at the lower right with no commas between them. A small bust of Scott, facing right, sits at the lower left and overlaps the yellow ring. Around the top of the ring runs 250TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH, with 2021 at the bottom. The edge reads THE WILL TO DO, THE SOUL TO DARE.

Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish poet, novelist, historian and biographer, and he is often credited with inventing the historical novel as well as writing its finest examples. His poetry turned a Scottish landscape once thought of as wild and forbidding into a place of lochs and glens that readers admired, and his novels, among them Waverley, Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, The Heart of Mid-Lothian and The Bride of Lammermoor, mixed history with invention and sold in large numbers. For the 250th anniversary of his birth in 2021, The Royal Mint made him the subject of a UK coin for the first time, with support from The Abbotsford Trust, and the coin first appeared in the 2021 annual coin set. The design is by the lettering artist Stephen Raw, who also designed the 2018 Armistice £2 and the Sherlock Holmes 50p. He let the words carry the coin: SIR WALTER SCOTT fills the centre in ornate letters over three lines, with NOVELIST, HISTORIAN and POET stacked beneath, and a small bust of Scott in profile at the lower left. The edge quotes a line of his verse, THE WILL TO DO, THE SOUL TO DARE.