Trevithick Steam Locomotive £2 (2004)

The steam locomotive £2 was put into circulation in large numbers, so a coin from change is worth face value. Collectors pay more for the brilliant uncirculated version, sold in a Royal Mint pack and in sets, and more again for an unopened pack. When grading a loose coin, look at the detail of the locomotive and the teeth of the cog, which rub down with handling, and check the railway pattern on the edge for knocks.

With 5,004,500 struck for circulation, the Trevithick Steam Locomotive £2 is the 29th rarest of the 44 ranked £2 designs and has the 104th 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 Rugby World Cup £2, with 4,933,000 struck, and the next more common is the Gunpowder Plot £2, with 5,140,500 struck.

Look for an early steam engine set inside a toothed cog wheel, with TWO POUNDS above it in the centre. Around the rim you should read R.TREVITHICK, INVENTION INDUSTRY PROGRESS and two dates, the second of them 2004. Instead of words, the edge has a railway line pattern pressed into it, so a glance at the edge settles any doubt. There are no recorded varieties or errors of the steam locomotive coin.

In the early nineteenth century the mining engineer Richard Trevithick built the first steam railway locomotive, and on its first run it hauled iron, wagons and passengers from Merthyr Tydfil to Abercynon in South Wales. The engine is known as the Penydarren locomotive, after the ironworks it was built for. The Royal Mint marked the bicentenary of that journey with this £2 in 2004, designed by Robert Lowe. His reverse places the Penydarren engine inside a cog wheel, with TWO POUNDS above the engine, still within the cog. Around the rim runs R.TREVITHICK, the year of the journey, INVENTION INDUSTRY PROGRESS and 2004. There is no lettering on the edge: the milling carries an incuse railway line motif instead. The coin pairs a cupro-nickel centre with a nickel-brass outer ring, and Ian Rank-Broadley's portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is on the obverse.