The 2012 London Olympics 50 Pence Collection.

http://www.royalmint.com/sportscollection/site/default.aspx


This could be Britain's 'state quarters' equivalent in that kids and adults will spend months trying to find these coins in their change and collect them in special folders.

I've just purchased the folder online and the first 8 50ps. As I did with the state quarters, I think I'm going to have one set I have collected from circulation...and then an un-circulated set.

There will be 29 coins in total to collect.

 

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Yes, I just saw these up. They seem a lot like the 25 cent coins that Canada released over 3 years for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

 

Those are neat. I wouldnt take the time to collect them though.

 

One thing annoys me, why can't they have 30 coins instead of 29? 30 being an even number is automatically better.

I see kids struggling to not spend their collection though 29x50p is £14.50 aka the new David Bowie LP or whatever they listen to today.

I'm also a massive fan of the Olympics, so I was bound to get these.

 

The 29 pieces cover the 29 sports of the Olympics and Paralympics. Of course they could have added a "general" Olympics 50p coin to have 30 coins, but limiting the set to those 29 makes sense to me ...

Christian

 

And they could make all their coins "more rounded", but this kind of things may not be a priority for people in the UK, as it was not in the past to embrace the decimal system.

I find them really nice. It will be difficult for me to get the entire collection one by one, so I will take the risk to check whether they issue a global BU set after the Olympic Games. Let's see then how they solve how to put those 29 coins in a good way, maybe adding a medal.

 

I finally received the collection folder today, and to my surprise it was a folder to place the coin cards in, rather than singular coins from circulation.

And at the back as you suggested, there is a 'collectors medallion' which will be 'coin' number 30.

This is how it looks...

 

love the swimmin one. cant waite to start seeing these in circulation

 

Oh Man!! I want to collect these!!!

 

Well, I won't; there is no way I could find all these in circulation, and buying them all -- hmm. What I would really like to get though is the football coin. http://www.royalmint.com/sportscollection/site/page2.aspx#football I love the way it explains what offside is.

Christian

 

Any chance anyone can tell me if the Online £2.99 price can be beat in Shops there in the UK?

Thanks.

 

I think the mint is the only place you can buy them from.

Here are some images I took of my favourite ones.










completed set.

 

i've got these as they are the latest in the british coin series, and for purely no other reason.

incidentally i managed to get all the state quarters from change as anyone who went to the states always kept a check on their change and brought me the state quarters home.

 

I just got the Canadian 25¢ set for this year's Winter Olympics because I don't live there. I've got a pretty good collection of base metal olympic coins going back most of the way. I started out with the silver Mexican 10 peso from 1968, and was able to get most of the five dollar Canadian 1972 coins at melt (yeah, these weren't base metal, but they were very cheap).

Olympic coins, in recent years, have been extremely expensive with a tiny sop for the smaller collector. China last time, for example, had a series of very cheap bronze/brass coins and the rest were up there through the roof. Same with the Canadian, Greek and Italian coins from the last few years. I got the two euroses for both Torino and Athens.

Look for the 50p coins and forget the rest, as you most likely cannot afford them.

 

Someone found one of these in their change the other day, and it made national news!!!


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...g-given-rare-50p-piece-dated-2011-change.html

"It's a find that could earn a student a mint - a 50 pence piece with next year's date on."

"Now the 17-year-old forensic science student hopes to sell it to coin collectors to help pay her university fees after she leaves Fareham College in Hampshire."

"Coin experts are perplexed by the find."


but then...

"However, the Royal Mint today said the coins have slowly been released into circulation since October so people should expect to start finding them in their change now - and their value is only 50 pence."

= FAIL

 

Good to see that UK news services can be just as clueless as their US counterparts. It makes one wonder who these "coin experts" were that the Daily Mail so rigorously interviewed, apart from one guy whose only listed credential is being from Portsmouth. Also, apparently on par with the US Mint, the Royal Mint says that they have been releasing them since October and then their spokesman says, "It is unusual... It is very special." :thumb: The DailyFail makes me laugh!!!

 

izotz says 'And they could make all their coins "more rounded"'
Why should they? I love collecting world coins for their diversity (design, composition, shape etc). And Spain has not been averse to using the same shape as the 50p. See km#1010 1500 Pesetas 1999 and km#1039 1500 Pesetas 2000.
​

 

Umm, this is the Daily Mail. What do you expect, accuracy?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI

But those were collector coins, not circulation pieces. Also, they are different from the British 20p and 50p coins - look at the shape. The shape of such a UK piece is a "curve of constant width" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curve_of_constant_width and scroll down to "Examples") which is important for vending machines for example.

But since the euro coins inherited the "Spanish Flower" shape for the 20 cent coins from the Spanish 50 pesetas pieces, I have that nagging feeling that izotz's comment regarding "odd" shapes was not all too serious ...

Christian

 

the 50p has long been a vehicle for UK commemorative coins the first being in 1973 to celebrate entry into the EEC.

 

As chrisild said, Spanish 1500 Pesetas coins were not for circulation. About "more rounded" coins I was just joking about UK and decimal system. That was my intention when I wrote the smiley. Sorry for the misunderstanding.