Winston Churchill £2 (2024)

The Winston Churchill £2 was not struck for circulation. Coins reach the market from the 2024 annual set, as brilliant uncirculated coins in packs and capsules, and as proofs. A loose coin is judged on condition, so check the braiding on the uniform and the face for rubbing. Fingerprints and spots on the plain field around the portrait also count against it. The proofs are a separate issue with their own prices.

The Winston Churchill £2 was not issued for circulation, so it has no rarity rank.

The Winston Churchill £2 shows him young rather than as the wartime leader: a head-and-shoulders portrait facing out, in a military tunic with heavy braiding across the chest. His birth year sits to the left of the portrait and 1965 to the right. The outer ring carries an anniversary inscription ending WINSTON CHURCHILL, the edge reads PAVE THE WAY FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM, and the obverse shows King Charles III.

Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, the eldest child of the Conservative politician Lord Randolph Churchill and the American-born Jennie Jerome. He got into the Royal Military College at Sandhurst on his third attempt and joined the 4th Hussars, a cavalry regiment, in the year his father died. As a soldier he travelled widely and wrote about the wars he saw for newspapers, then turned to politics in 1900. He became prime minister in 1940, led Britain to victory in the Second World War and returned to the post in 1951, and in 1953 he accepted both the Order of the Garter and the Nobel Prize for Literature. For the 150th anniversary of his birth, Natasha Seaward designed a coin that goes back before all of that. Her reverse shows the young Churchill head and shoulders, facing the viewer in the braided dress uniform of his cavalry years, with the years of his birth and death on either side. An inscription naming the anniversary runs around the outer ring, and the edge reads PAVE THE WAY FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM. The coin was the first £2 design in The Royal Mint's 2024 annual set.