Aquatics 50p (2011)

The swimmer with a clear face is one of the more plentiful coins in the Olympic set, so its price depends mostly on condition. Worn coins from change sell for the least, while bright ones without bag marks sell for more. Brilliant uncirculated examples in the Royal Mint's Aquatics coin card or the Aquatics coin cover are worth more again, particularly when still sealed. Water lines across the face would mark the withdrawn first design, a separate and much rarer coin.

With 2,179,000 struck for circulation, the Aquatics 50p is the 34th rarest of the 81 ranked 50p designs and has the 79th lowest mintage of all 194 circulating UK designs. That puts it in the Scarce band, for mintages 1,000,000 to 2,499,999.

The next rarer 50p is the Canoeing 50p, with 2,166,500 struck, and the next more common is the Atlantic Salmon 50p, with 2,200,000 struck.

Look for a swimmer lying flat in the water under the London 2012 logo, head towards the right, with cap and goggles showing. On the circulating Aquatics 50p the face is well defined, and the water lines stop short of it. If ripples run straight across the face, you have the withdrawn first version, which never went into change. Its date, 2011, sits beside the Queen's portrait on the heads side.

The Aquatics 50p comes from the public competition the Royal Mint ran before the London 2012 Games, which produced a coin for every Olympic and Paralympic sport. Its designer, the silversmith Jonathan Olliffe, chose swimming for the challenge of suggesting water on a small coin. He gathered old images, pictures from books and the internet, and filled pages with sketches of swimmers in different positions before settling on engraved lines to create the illusion of water, using his silversmith's sense of how cut lines read in metal. The reverse shows a swimmer face down and submerged, heading for the right edge in cap and goggles, with ripples wrapping the body and the London 2012 logo above. His first version carried those water lines across the swimmer's face. The Royal Mint adapted the design so the face stands clear and the swimmer is easier to see, and that revised coin is the one struck for circulation in 2011. Olliffe also designed the Gymnastics 50p in the same set.

It was one of the 30 coins in the Olympic set issued in 2011.