Rare £2 Coins

Rare £2 Coins List with values in 2024

Pictures of rare £2 pound coins

Coin	Description	Mintage	Year	Circulated Value	New Value
	£2 Commonwealth Games - Northern Ireland (Very Rare)	485,500	2002	£33	£70
	£2 Commonwealth Games - Wales (RARE)	588,500	2002	£14	£35
	£2 First World War Centenary Royal Navy (5th Effigy)	650,000	2015	£4	£15
	£2 Commonwealth Games - England (RARE)	650,500	2002	£10	£30
	£2 Commonwealth Games - Scotland (RARE)	771,750	2002	£9	£30
	£2 Olympic Games Handover (London) to Rio (RARE)	845,000	2012	£4	£50
	£2 King James Bible (RARE)	975,000	2011	£4	£25
	£2 Olympic Games of 1908 Centenary	910,000	2008	£4	£16
	£2 Mary Rose (Ship)	1,040,000	2011	£4	£26
	£2 Magna Carta	1,495,000	2015	£3	£10

Prices are the average selling prices for coins seen in great condition. Prices may be incomplete or entirely inaccurate due to the wild variation in coin conditions and selling prices.

Please have your coins valued by a coin auctioneer or other numismatic professional since prices here are for general guidance only and do not apply to any coins that we have not seen in person.

We have no way to be sure any eBay listing was completed and paid for. Check back to this page often for pricing updates of £2 coin values.

You can tell which version of the Commonwealth Games £2 coin you have by looking at the flag in the circle for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, or Wales.

If your coin is circulated it can be difficult to determine which coin you have as they get damaged or dirty. Check £2 coin Facebook groups for help.

Try our £2 coin value checker

How much is my £2 coin worth?

All £2 coins are worth face value, however, some coin collectors may be willing to pay more to add certain rare two-pound coins to their collection. The rarer the coin is, the more it will fetch but value also depends upon the condition of the coin.

Coin prices in our table above show you the averages (of the last fifty sold listings on eBay) and not prices for individual coins. Consult a specialist coin service if you think you have a valuable coin.

Do your own research before buying and selling coins and beware that the rarer coins are often faked.

Is the upside-down edge of a £2 coin a mint error?

We are often asked if the text being upside-down on a £2 coin makes it a rare or error coin. Unfortunately, the answer is “No”, since any two pound coin can have the writing on the edge any way up since the planchets are loaded randomly.

Top 10 Rare £2 Coins

The top 10 rare two-pound coins are shown in the coin list above. Use the next/previous buttons to see all circulating coins.

The mintage figure is the number of coins minted and released to general coin circulation by The Royal Mint.

Over time, large numbers of these coins may have entered coin collections so the numbers may have reduced to even less of these coins that coin be found in your pocket change.

What is the Rarest £2 Coin?

The rarest two-pound coin is the Commonwealth Games with the Northern Ireland flag. The 2002 XVII Commonwealth Games released a set of four coins. All four coins are similar with the exception of a different flag for Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England. The Northern Ireland £2 is the rarest two-pound coin in circulation.

£2 Coins Not Entering Circulation

There have not been any £2 coins entered into UK coin circulation since the Shakespeare coins were released in 2016.

Coins have been issued as Collector Only coins, which are known as NIFC coins, Not Intended For Circulation.

The reasons for these coins not being circulated are at the discretion of the Royal Mint. If they feel that there is already enough of this coin denomination circulating, they will not release more.

NIFC Two Pound Coins List

Not Intended For Circulation £2 coins list:

• 2017 Jane Austen
• 2017 WWI Aviation
• 2018 Frankenstein
• 2018 RAF Centenary Badge
• 2018 WWI Armistice
• 2018 RAF Centenary Spitfire
• 2018 RAF Centenary Vulcan
• 2018 RAF Centenary Lightning II
• 2018 Captain Cook (first of a three-coin series)
• 2018 RAF Centenary Sea King (Helicopter)
• 2019 D-Day 75th Anniversary
• 2019 Wedgwood 260th Anniversary
• 2019 Samuel Pepys Diary
• 2019 Captain Cook (second of a three-coin series)
• 2020 Agatha Christie
• 2020 VE Day 75th Anniversary
• 2020 Mayflower
• 2020 Captain Cook (third of a three-coin series)
• 2021 Walter Scott
• 2021 H G Wells
• 2022 FA Cup
• 2022 Dame Vera Lynn

£2 Error Coins

Questions we hear often from UK coin collectors on two-pound coins around £2 error coins are:

• The edge inscription is upside down, does this make it an error coin?
  • No. Coins are added either way up in the minting process so there is no correct or incorrect way up, it’s a 50/50 chance. Both are common.
• The dots are missing or incomplete around the inner edge, does this make it an error coin?
  • Whilst it can be considered a production-quality error, it’s very common for the dots to be missing so it does not have any value to the coin.

These flaws can be considered mis-strikes, i.e. a variation caused by worn dies or some other issue in the minting machinery/process.

In our opinion, a true error coin is caused by a human mistake, such as the wrong die being used or the incorrect metal planchet placed during the strike of a coin. Here are some examples of £2 mis-strikes and error coins.

2015 £2 Britannia Coin with an inverted effigy

Some 2015 Britannia coins have the Queen’s head at the wrong angle of rotation. These are known as “inverted effigy” coins.

The Royal Mint has stated that this misalignment was “almost certainly the result of one of the dies working loose and rotating during the striking process”.

A coin described as a “quarter-turn” inverted effigy Britannia coin was reported as sold on eBay in October 2020 for £50.

Shakespeare Tragedies £2 Coin with wrong edge description

Examples have been found of the Shakespeare £2 coins with the wrong edge description lettering. This is most likely a human error in following manufacturing instructions.

The edge should read “WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS A MAN” – however, some coins read “FOR KING AND COUNTRY” which is meant for the First World War Centenary – Army coins.

A completed eBay sold listing for one of these coins show 24 bids with a winning bid of £64

Two Pound Coin Hunt

If you type “two pound coin hunt” into YouTube search you will find a few regular coin collectors who record their coin hunts and post to their channel.

Typically they get large £500 bags of two pound coins fresh from their bank.

Inside the large bag will be twenty-five smaller bags with ten x two pound coins in each (£20).

Coin hunters prefer the smaller bags to be the sealed bags vs. the re-usable bags as there is less chance that someone went through them already.

Sometimes you may get a sealed bag where all the coins are the same. These are often referred to as “uncirculated” coins, as they never left the bag into regular pocket change. These are still not worth as much as “Brilliant Uncirculated” coins as these are minted to a higher standard. You may also find that the bagged coins have dings where they bump into each other in the bag, so not as clean as a BUNC version.

When coin hunting you are looking for rare coins, fake coins, varieties, and error coins.

The usual method is to open each bag and flip each coin one by one to see which ones you have. Another method, which may prove to be quicker, is to “edge hunt” the coins. This method requires you to check the edge inscriptions of the coins so you don’t have to flip each one.

It may be faster but you are more likely to miss something!

Use our website to familiarise yourself with which coins have the most collector’s value and interest.

History Of The £2 Coin

The first base metal £2 coin was issued in the United Kingdom in 1986 to commemorate the Thirteenth Commonwealth Games which that year were held in Scotland.  Commemorative £2 coins continued to be issued in single-colour nickel-brass for special occasions.

Following a review of the United Kingdom coinage in 1994, it emerged that there was a requirement for a general circulation £2 coin.

A consultation process took place with the vending machine industry, members of the public, and special interest groups such as the RNIB and Age Concern. The consensus of opinion from the consultation favoured a bi-colour coin because it would be easily distinguishable from the other coins in circulation.

The bi-metallic £2 coin was eventually launched on 15 June 1998 and millions of Technology £2 coins were released into circulation. In 2015, the definitive £2 coin was changed to the Britannia coin design.

The bi-metallic composition is:

• Outer:  Nickel-Brass (76% copper, 4% nickel, 20% zinc)
• Inner:  Cupro-nickel (75% copper, 25% nickel)

The Royal Mint releases many new £2 coins each year, to celebrate notable anniversaries, people of the UK, British culture, and history.

£2 are no longer being released into circulation and are available only direct from The Royal Mint as collectible coins.

The first £2 coins

The first base metal £2 coin was issued in the United Kingdom in 1986 to commemorate the Thirteenth Commonwealth Games which were held in Scotland that year. Commemorative £2 coins continued to be issued in single-colour nickel-brass for special occasions.