Trinity House £2 (2014)

Trinity House £2 coins went into circulation widely, and a worn one from change sells for a little over face value. A coin with a sharp lighthouse and lens and little wear on the ring does better. The main premium is for The Royal Mint's brilliant uncirculated coin in its presentation folder.

With 3,705,000 struck for circulation, the Trinity House £2 is the twentieth rarest of the 44 ranked £2 designs and has the 88th 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 Robert Burns £2, with 3,253,000 struck, and the next more common is the Charles Darwin £2, with 3,903,000 struck.

The lighthouse £2 is easy to pick out: a lighthouse stands in the middle of the silver-coloured centre, framed by the shape of its lens, with rays spreading to each side. TRINITY HOUSE and two dates run around the gold-coloured ring, and TWO POUNDS is at the bottom of this side. Turn it over and you will find no value under the Queen's portrait; on the Trinity House coin that is correct, not an error. The edge reads SERVING THE MARINER.

Trinity House was established by Royal Charter under Henry VIII to make Britain's waterways safer, and for five centuries it has served mariners, maintaining lighthouses and other aids to navigation and supporting the welfare and training of seafarers. The Royal Mint marked the 500th anniversary in 2014 with a reverse by Joe Whitlock Blundell working with David Eccles. It sets a lighthouse inside a picture of its own lens, with the beam shining out to the left and right. TRINITY HOUSE runs around the ring between the year of the charter and the year of the anniversary, and TWO POUNDS appears on this side at the bottom. That leaves the obverse with just the Queen's titles around Ian Rank-Broadley's portrait. The milled edge reads SERVING THE MARINER. The coin was first sold in brilliant uncirculated presentation folders and entered circulation shortly afterwards.