Hockey 50p (2011)

With a mintage near the middle of the Olympic designs, the Hockey coin's price turns on condition. Sharp detail on the two players and their sticks, and a clean field, make a circulated coin worth more; flat, scratched coins from change are worth the least. Brilliant uncirculated examples in the Royal Mint's Hockey coin card or coin cover sell above either, and sealed ones do best.

With 1,773,500 struck for circulation, the Hockey 50p is the 22nd rarest of the 81 ranked 50p designs and has the 67th 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 Wheelchair Rugby 50p, with 1,765,500 struck, and the next more common is the Isaac Newton 50p, with 1,801,500 struck.

Look for two players side by side, both facing right, their sticks reaching for the same ball, with a straight horizontal line crossing the coin behind them. The London 2012 logo with Olympic rings sits above and 50 PENCE below. On the heads side, the date 2011 follows the Queen's titles around Ian Rank-Broadley's portrait. No varieties of the Hockey 50p are recorded.

Robert Evans had a lifelong interest in athletics and was already the designer of other coins in circulation when he entered the competition for the London 2012 coins. He submitted designs for a few sports, but hockey appealed most because of its action: he wanted to capture the heart of a contest and the conflict between players on a small coin. To get the detail right he contacted the University of Glamorgan, which lent him two international standard hockey players for an afternoon in a gymnasium. He took plenty of photographs of them, which gave him all the information he needed for the detail of the design. The reverse shows two female players challenging for the ball with their sticks, both facing right, with a horizontal line running across the coin behind them. The London 2012 emblem crowns the design and 50 PENCE runs along the bottom. It is dated 2011 on the obverse.

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