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Three different £1 coins were issued for 2016 – The standard (unchanging) shield reverse design by Matthew Dent and a new heraldic themed coin which will not circulate and was promoted as ‘the last round £1 coin’. The huge numbers of new shape £1 coin required for their introduction in 2017 meant that the Royal Mint produced an awful lot of 12-sided coins in 2016 (and dated 2016) for release in 2017.
Obverse Type 5 (bust design by (Mr) Jody Clark):
Reverse Type 15 (design by Matthew Dent):
Edge: DECUS ET TUTAMEN.
Mintage for Circulation: None, this coin was issued in sets only.
Collectability/Scarcity: 5 (for scale details see here)
The story behind the design:
The reverse design shows the shield of the Royal Arms by Matthew Dent. The edge inscription is ‘DECUS ET TUTAMEN’. Matthew (Matt) Dent won the competition to design the all-new 2008 coinage. He grew up in Wales and studied Graphic design at the University of Brighton.
Obverse Type 5 (bust design by (Mr) Jody Clark):
Reverse Type 25 (design by Gregory Cameron):
Edge: DECUS ET TUTAMEN.
Mintage for Circulation: None, this coin was issued in packages only.
Collectability/Scarcity: 4 (for scale details see here)
The story behind the design:
The reverse design by Gregory Cameron represents the heraldry of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom.
Obverse Type 6 (bust design by (Mr) Jody Clark):
Reverse Type 26 (design by David Pearce):
Edge: Alternate milled and plain ‘sides’.
Mintage for Circulation: 500,000,000.
Collectability/Scarcity: 1 (for scale details see here)
The whole 12-sided £1 coin theme is in fact quite complicated, there being 7 different types of 2015/16/17 coins currently known! This post features a handy graphic overview: The new £1 coin varieties
2/4/2017 You read it here first – A mule exists of this coin: The new 12 sided coins have the date on both sides. It’s not that obvious on the reverse, but they have repeated micro digits on the inner part of the rim. Going by the Royal Mint’s recent slack quality control standards and (to give them credit) the massive numbers of new £1 coins that they needed to make, I suppose having different reverse dies with a tiny, almost invisible difference was probably asking for trouble! And it looks like it has indeed caused trouble and another error coin has been created by someone not paying attention, this time it’s a 2016 £1 coin with ‘2016’ in large normal lettering to the left of the Queen, muled with the 2017 reverse showing the tiny ‘2017’ digits on the rim. I know of about 50 so far and as it’s hard to spot without a magnifying lens (see below), there are probably a lot of others out there.
Another: There is actually a trial coin which features the normal 12-sided ‘2016’ dated obverse and the trial piece reverse. More details on this page.
Error Coins: There are an awful lot of purported ‘error’ new pound coins on eBay at the moment which have actually been created at home or in someone’s shed. The middle silver coloured parts have been pushed out and re-inserted, either the wrong way round or rotated (it’s also very easy to do with the £2 coins). Some people are even selling separate silver middle parts and brass rings, and people are actually buying them! These are not errors, they are home made and it’s disgraceful that they are being described and sold as errors. It is physically not possible for the Royal Mint to produce a coin with the middle part the wrong way up or rotated, as the two pieces are pushed together at the same time as the design is struck onto them. Other error new pound coins usually concern very minor imperfections that inevitably occur on some coins (my opinion is that the Royal Mint’s quality control is pretty dire in recent years), in fact I suspect no two coins are exactly the same so technically most probably have at least one minor error if you examine them closely enough – so step away from the internet, don’t consider clogging up eBay with silly minor miniscule imperfection errors, take your £1 coin and spend it on apples.
Version with a mint mark: The Royal Mint sold a pair of 2016 coins (this one and the ‘last round pound’ – Reverse type 25, above) in a card pack including a tiny cross-crosslet mint mark on the 12-sided coin. The mint mark is located under the left hand side of the crown, approximately opposite to where the DP initials appear on the other side. The coin with the mint mark was only made available within this package of coins.
The story behind the design:
The reverse design by David Pearce represents the national floral symbols of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom.
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