Giant Deer 50p (2024)

Because the Giant Deer 50p reached buyers only as a brilliant uncirculated collector coin, the price rests on preservation and packaging, not wear. Dealers ask more for it in the original Royal Mint pack than in a capsule or another firm's card. Toning, spots, scratches or a creased pack pull it down. The colour edition, sold in a limited run, and the silver and gold proof strikes each have their own market.

The Giant Deer 50p was not issued for circulation, so it has no rarity rank.

The antlers identify it straight away: a deer with enormous spreading antlers above a skeleton that runs along the bottom of the coin, where the hump over the shoulders shows clearly. MEGALOCEROS reads across the top and GIANT DEER across the bottom, with RN for Robert Nicholls. The heads side has King Charles III. A limited colour edition was sold as well as the plain coin, and neither was put into circulation.

Known varieties of the Giant Deer 50p, all listed among the UK error coins and varieties:

• Colour edition: A colour-printed brilliant uncirculated edition, with an issue limit of 10,000.

The giant deer was one of the largest mammals of the Ice Age. It roamed the frozen plains of Eurasia and grew the largest antlers of any known animal, living or extinct. It closed the three-coin Ice Age Giants set within The Royal Mint's Tales of the Earth range, following the steppe mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros. Palaeo-artist Robert Nicholls based the design on scientifically accurate reconstructions, with guidance from the Natural History Museum's Professor Adrian Lister. A giant deer skeleton runs along the bottom of the design, showing the animal's distinctive shoulder hump and huge antlers, while the living animal stands above it. The genus name MEGALOCEROS is set above the deer and GIANT DEER below, with the initials RN. Martin Jennings's portrait of King Charles III is on the obverse, as on the rest of the set.

It was one of the three coins in the Ice Age Giants set issued in 2024.