Fencing 50p (2011)

Fencing is one of the more plentiful designs in the London 2012 set, so condition sets the price. A coin on which both fencers and their blades stand out sharply is worth more than a worn one. Uncirculated coins, whether in the Royal Mint's Fencing coin card or in its coin cover, sell above those from change, and more again if the packaging is unopened.

With 2,115,500 struck for circulation, the Fencing 50p is the 27th rarest of the 81 ranked 50p designs and has the 72nd 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 Jemima Puddle-Duck 50p, with 2,100,000 struck, and the next more common is the Badminton 50p, with 2,133,500 struck.

Look for two fencers facing each other across the coin, one stretched into a long lunge, with their feet just above 50 PENCE. Apart from the two figures, the reverse holds only the London 2012 logo at the top and the value at the bottom, so the bodies carry the whole design. The obverse is dated 2011. No varieties of the Fencing 50p are recorded.

Ruth Summerfield spotted the Royal Mint's London 2012 coin competition while reading a newspaper on a break during a hospital night shift, and she worked on her entry in the breaks that followed. She did not play any sport herself, but a friend who fenced gave her the idea, and she wanted a sport in which the body makes striking, dramatic shapes that would translate well onto a coin. Her reverse shows two fencers in action, one lunging forward in attack, their feet just above the words 50 PENCE, with the London 2012 logo and Olympic rings overhead. The coin is dated 2011 on the heads side. Speaking again in 2022, she counted winning among the greatest achievements of her life and the only one that will outlast her. She had checked her change for years and received other Olympic 50ps, but never one of her own. She plans to leave her gold version of the coin to a goddaughter who has taken up fencing.

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