50 Pence - Elizabeth II Badminton Gold Proof (2011)

About the 2011 50 Pence - Elizabeth II Badminton – Gold Proof

The 2011 50 Pence - Elizabeth II Badminton – Gold Proof is a collector 50 pence coin in the Olympic 50p (2011) series, struck in 91.67% gold. It weighs 15.5g and measures 27.3mm across. Reverse design: Badminton shuttlecock, with illustrations of a bad.

Common questions

History and design

This is a collector version of the 50 Pence - Elizabeth II – Badminton. The history below is that coin's; the mintage, varieties and collecting notes on its page do not apply to this strike.

The Badminton 50p belongs to the set of 29 coins issued for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, one for each sport. All are dated 2011, and the designs were chosen through a competition open to the public.

The Royal Mint's figures give a circulating mintage of 2,133,500. By coincidence the Volleyball coin has exactly the same figure, the only tie in the series. The pair sit in the upper part of the table: seven designs were struck in larger numbers and twenty in smaller. The nearest neighbours are Fencing, just below at 2,115,500, and Equestrian, just above at 2,142,500.

The reverse was designed by Emma Kelly, an illustrator, and selected from more than 30,000 public submissions. A shuttlecock fills the centre, and around it are small silhouettes of players in different positions, showing the range of shots in the game. The royal proclamation describes it as "a shuttlecock and a diagram of badminton actions", with the London 2012 logo above and 50 PENCE below.

Kelly told the Royal Mint Museum that she came across the competition by accident, through an advertisement in Design Week. The shuttlecock came first: "I choose Badminton as I knew I would enjoy drawing the shuttlecock, I then wanted to add people and the human element into the space". She approached it as she would any illustration commission, researching images and shapes, and then "went off to a local sports shop and bought a feathered shuttlecock" to draw from.

The obverse carries the fourth portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by Ian Rank-Broadley, in which she wears the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara. The edge is plain.