St Paul's Cathedral £2 (2005)

The St Paul's £2 was struck in large numbers for circulation, so coins from change trade at face value. Collectors pay more for brilliant uncirculated coins, which went on sale in late May 2005 in a Royal Mint pack and in sets and cards, and an unopened pack is worth the most. On loose coins, look at the searchlight beams and the detail of the cathedral, which blur with wear, and at the flat field for scratches.

With 10,191,000 struck for circulation, the St Paul's Cathedral £2 is the 42nd rarest of the 44 ranked £2 designs and has the 148th lowest mintage of all 194 circulating UK designs. That puts it in the Common band, for mintages 10,000,000 or more.

The next rarer £2 is the First World War Army £2, with 9,550,000 struck, and the next more common is the Britannia £2, with 13,650,000 struck.

St Paul's Cathedral, lit by searchlights, is the centrepiece of the tails side. TWO POUNDS is above it and 1945-2005 below. Check the edge for IN VICTORY MAGNANIMITY IN PEACE GOODWILL. This is a two-colour coin, whereas the 1995 Dove of Peace £2 marking the fiftieth anniversary is single-metal and shows only a bird. No varieties or errors of the St Paul's design are recorded.

On 8 May 1945 Winston Churchill announced Victory in Europe Day, and the war in Europe was over after Germany's surrender. St Paul's Cathedral had come through the Blitz, and it became a wartime emblem of hope for Londoners and the country beyond. Sixty years later, in 2005, The Royal Mint chose the cathedral for its £2 marking the anniversary. Bob Elderton, credited as Robert Elderton on The Royal Mint's product page, designed the reverse, which shows St Paul's lit up by searchlights. TWO POUNDS sits above the cathedral and the dates 1945-2005 below it. The edge carries IN VICTORY MAGNANIMITY IN PEACE GOODWILL, part of the maxim Churchill set at the front of his history of the Second World War. The closing words, IN PEACE GOODWILL, had already appeared on the edge of the Dove of Peace coin issued ten years earlier for the fiftieth anniversary. This coin has a cupro-nickel centre within a nickel-brass ring and carries Ian Rank-Broadley's portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.