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How manipulative of them! 100, my arse, what a pointless 'circulation' mintage, when they are offering coins which they argue 'hypothethically' WON'T be circulation coins on account of their purchase price to the general public!

So, general public go Oooooo, one of those, how much is it worth? Hmmm, you can buy a brand new one at the mint!

Further edit: so bugger all!

Further, further, edit: I'm tired of all this 'intelligent' marketing! My circulation collection will now end at 2014...like that ain't crazy anyways!

Bye, bye, RM, from stuart!

Edited by Coinery

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Unfortunately, the BBC article may well be another example of journalistic sensationalist drivel. The statement that they will be very rare on account of them being the last issue to bear the current head of the queen is complete b******s. 1936 pennies are the last coin to bear the heade of George V, but they aren't rare on account of the design any more than this £2 coin is. Before anyone does something stupid, I would wait for a reliable statement to appear.

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Before anyone does something stupid, I would wait for a reliable statement to appear.

OK, I'll keep a few flips aside for 2015, just in case! ;)

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yes because we are getting a new head design.

bet the mint has goofed up and made a mule again and passed it off as something else :lol:

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Didn't they say the same about the underground £2 coins that a few (35k?) would be randomly released from tube ticket machines. Which they were, and now mintage is at around 1.5m!

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Confirmed by the Royal Mint yesterday as 100 coins.

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I am totally confused by the reports that the media are spreading. They all mention how rare an issue of just 100 coins makes the £2 and then quickly go on to say that the version 'is also on sale as a commemorative coin' for £10 on the royal mint website. Does this mean that the only 'rare' coins will be the 100 true circulation coins? Looking at ebay completed listings is seems there are hundreds of these sealed commemorative packs. To me it seems as if the Royal Mint has issued 100 circulation quality coins to spread the word as to their scarcity and then in the same breath note how a 'commemorative variety' (I can see no immediate differences) is also available for £10. My worry is that people will assume they can grab a £2 coin with a mintage of just 100 pieces for £10 when in reality the issue for the 'commemorative variety' would be thousands. If this is the case then that is some very dubious marketing by the Royal Mint in my opinion.

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I agree, just a publicity stunt. They may be changing the obverse design for this coin later in the year, according to some reports, but the current design on sale from the RM is clearly available in the 10's of thousands (or more) ... at least it's BU (whatever quality that is these days!)

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I'm carrying a £10 version in my wallet for a couple of months, just so I can pull it out at the pub one day when the old boys are reading the scarcity reports in the papers! I'll be sure to have a copy of CCGB handy, so I can point to a couple of PAST rarity values...then, K'ching, £50 anyone? ;)

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The craziest thing is that they can and will get away with such thuggery

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I used to buy coins and sets from the Royal Mint for many years. I do not recall exactly of which year, (~1979) but I decided to buy a proof sovereign from them. I ordered the coin and had to wait for them to start minting. That month the price of gold rocketed. I had a letter from the mint saying that due to huge demand the coins minted were going to have to go into some sort of lottery and therefore I may not necessarily get one. A month or so went buy and a friend at work managed to get one from the mint. He was not a coin collector and had never bought a coin before. He applied to buy a coin from the mint because the price of the coins were fixed at the original offer price. This brilliant investment price was mentioned in national newspapers after the gold price rise. I did not get one of the sovereigns. I complained to the mint by letter, saying that they should have looked after their regular customers first. I realised that the RM was just a money making machine :rolleyes: . I have not bought a coin from them since and never will. I wouldn't buy a coin from them at half of it's spending value. (that's a lie ! I would buy a hundred thousand pound of pound coins for £50,000 !) :D:)

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The whole concept of legal tender is taken rather loosely nowadays. They make silver £20 coins (with £6.50 silver content) and £100 coins (with £22 silver content) and sell them for 'face value' but I am confused about how these large denominations are all of a sudden legal tender just because the RM marketing dept says they are. As far as I can tell there has been no amendment to the laws to make them legal tender. They sell like hot cakes, £20 for £20 or £100 for £100. Shops don't take them, even a lot of banks/post offices won't take them. They sell on ebay for up to £30ish because people believe that they are proper currency.

Is there anyone here with better legal knowledge on the current coins that actually are legal tender, because I'm quite sure the process is a fairly complicated one.

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Is there anyone here with better legal knowledge on the current coins that actually are legal tender, because I'm quite sure the process is a fairly complicated one.

The Coinage Act 1971 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/24) is heavy reading but section 3 (a), ( B) and © say that pretty much anything goes if the Queen says so. I don't know how that works in reality but I assume some committee agrees to what the Royal Mint suggests and the Queen just agrees with what the committee says.

edit: ignore the previous post - the forum stripped off most of what I said.

Edited by Mr T

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But has the Queen said so? Surely if the Queen had given her seal of approval to the £20 and £100 coins, then it would be recorded somewhere.

As for £50 notes, I think those are not accepted everywhere because of the risk of them being forgeries. Actually that's another hot potato because strictly speaking merchants are legally obliged to accept payment in BofE banknotes for all debts.

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The Coinage Act was amended in 2011 to allow variations to denominations and/or specifications to be made by proclamation. More details here.

However, I don't know where the actual proclamations are published that allowed the £5 coin, £20 coin etc to become legal tender.

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A lot of places don't take £50 notes either

English Shops don't take Scottish notes either

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I'd found the 2011 thing, but surely there has to be a specific mention of a coin with £20 face value somewhere?

That it (and the £100) had been made current by a proclamation under section 3 of the Act.

It concerns me that it's value new and it's re-sale value are all bolstered by the statement that they are legal tender coins, but that even if they are legal tender they admit that you can't spend them or exchange them at banks. They've made huge numbers of them. What would happen if there was some kind of economic stimulus in the future that led people to want to cash in their £20 and £100 coins at face value by the thousand, or by the hundreds of thousands?!

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Maybe it is part of the QE equation. It would be one way of trying to reassure the pessimists that money is being put into circulation to aid market liquidity, but on the other hand, with nobody accepting them, effectively results in no increase in the money supply - which is of course. not inflationary.

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they are not getting put into circulation, you have to buy them, like you used to have to with £2 coins, they existed before 1997, I actually obtained one from an aunt who was given the useless coinage in charity stuff, (1989 claim of rights) before 1997... but only that way, because they are not issued in a way that promotes them as Legal tender.

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they are not getting put into circulation, you have to buy them, like you used to have to with £2 coins, they existed before 1997, I actually obtained one from an aunt who was given the useless coinage in charity stuff, (1989 claim of rights) before 1997... but only that way, because they are not issued in a way that promotes them as Legal tender.

I can imagine you were quite pleased to have received it, of all of the modern coins she could have given you!

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