2004 Two Pounds

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Two different £2 coins were issued in 2004 – A commemorative coin to mark the steam locomotive and one with the standard ages of man reverse.

Commemorative £2 Coin, Type 12: (info on coin type numbers here)

Obverse Type (bust design by Ian Rank-Broadley):

2pounds1998-obv

Reverse Type (design by Robert Lowe):

2pounds2004revtrev

Edge: A pattern of arcs and curves, representing viaducts.

Mintage for Circulation: 5,004,500.

Collectability/Scarcity: 1 (for scale details see here)

The story behind the design:

The obverse has the portrait of the Queen by Ian Rank-Broadley. The reverse is by Robert Lowe and shows Richard Trevithick’s Steam Locomotive of 1804, which was the first to use a high pressure steam engine to pull 10 tons of iron, 5 wagons and 70 men over a distance of nearly 10 miles (in just over 4 hours!):

http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/PenydarrenLocomotive.htm

The Standard 2004 Coin:

Obverse Type (bust design by Ian Rank-Broadley):

2pounds1998-obv

Reverse Type (design by Bruce Rushin):

2poundsStandardrev

Edge: STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS.

Mintage for Circulation: 11,981,500.

Collectability/Scarcity: 1 (for scale details see here).

The story behind the design:

The obverse portrait of the Queen by Ian Rank-Broadley has been used on all UK coinage from 1998 to 2015 and is the fourth portrait of the Queen used on coinage. At the time of writing, this portrait is due to be replaced by a new one, to be unveiled in 2015.

The reverse design shows the ages of man. Represented are the Iron Age, the Industrial Revolution, the Electronic Age and the Internet Age. The edge quote ‘STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS’ is from a letter by Sir Isaac Newton from 1676 in which he wrote: ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants’, which may have been a modest nod to other scientists, but some say that it may have been poking fun at the stature of the recipient of the letter, Robert Hooke. The expression ‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’ pre-dates Newton by many centuries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants

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