Yes, there was a redesign in 2008 for all British coins. You can read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_of_the_pound_sterling I think the new design is stunning, and can only hope that US coins get a similar makeover soon.
and the £1 coin has the completed shield, it is certainly the most popular british set ever produced and has really fuelled the publics imagination.
Hmm, I don't really like it. But I guess I just don't like change. I've been collecting British and Canadian since I was a kid.
it is awsome. i have been trying to collect a full shield set from circulation for 2010 because that was the year my daughter was born and i still havent got the 50p after a year of looking
I LOVE this design, I have the 2011 mint set, it's VERY cool! It's just nice to see something thats really inovative for a change. They are pretty easy to find gbroke, most of the world coin dealers have them on the internet.
The coolest thing about it was that this was design contest open to the public. The winner was a 27-year-old graphic designer named Matthew Dent. Interesting things can happen when the mints stop doing everything in-house.
I got a 50p in a bag of mixed foreign coins, as well as the 1,2, and 5p. I haven't been able to find the 10 or 20p, though.
Guess nobody at the Royal Mint has to pay any highway tolls on a cold dark night, because the 10p and 2p look very close in size.
Maybe that is why they have hardly any toll roads in the UK. But yes, when those new designs were introduced, this concept - each penny/pence design being part of one big "shield design" - was advertised quite a bit, and I wondered what would happen in case of any future changes? For example, the 5p, 10p and 50p pieces were reduced in size a couple of years ago. Would be hard to do the same thing with the 1p and 2p coins (which still have the same sizes as about 40 years ago when the decimal coinage was introduced), and dropping a denomination would be difficult too ... Christian
I think the new smaller size for the 50p was actually introduced in 1997, the small 10p in 1992 and the small 5p in 1990, was so it's been more than a couple of years
Hmm, "several" then? It's just that, when these Dent designs came out, I thought and still think that they look great as a set. But until then I assumed that the 2p coins had not been "shrunk" because they might be phased out at some point. This set design would make that a little more difficult ... Christian
thats sounds good. Anyone know a UK member that would be willing to ship a set to the US? Not really looking for a set from the Royal Mint, more or less looking for one out of circulation.