WWF 50p (2011)

The WWF 50p sells for a modest premium over face value even in circulated condition. On a design this busy, crisp detail matters: coins where the small icons are still distinct are worth more than worn ones where they have blurred together. Uncirculated coins sit above any circulated example, and the proof versions in silver and gold, including the silver proof piedfort, are priced as collector coins, with the gold proof the scarcest of all.

With 3,400,000 struck for circulation, the WWF 50p is the 39th rarest of the 81 ranked 50p designs and has the 87th lowest mintage of all 194 circulating UK designs. That puts it in the Uncommon band, for mintages 2,500,000 to 9,999,999.

The next rarer 50p is the Archery 50p, with 3,345,500 struck, and the next more common is The Tailor of Gloucester 50p, with 3,900,000 struck.

The panda at the centre, ringed by a crowd of tiny animal and plant icons, makes this coin easy to spot, and the letters WWF sit right under the panda. The only figures on the tails side are the date 2011 at the bottom, so check the heads side for FIFTY PENCE beneath the Queen's portrait. It is the same size as the 50ps in use today. Proof, silver proof, silver proof piedfort and gold proof versions were also made for collectors, some of them in the 2011 proof sets.

WWF, the World Wide Fund for Nature, was set up in 1961 and grew into one of the largest conservation organisations in the world, working to save endangered species and protect important natural places. For fifty years of its work the Royal Mint turned to Matthew Dent, designer of the Royal Shield coins, and he built the design around that number. Fifty small, stylised icons, together representing the range of the charity's work, surround the famous panda logo, with the letters WWF just beneath it. They include mammals, birds, fish, insects, lizards, fruit, seeds, trees and plants, along with symbols of human impact such as a footprint. The date 2011 sits at the bottom centre, and Dent's initials MD are at the far right of the bottom. The tails side has no value on it. FIFTY PENCE appears on the heads side instead, below Ian Rank-Broadley's portrait of the Queen, and that side carries no date.