50 Pence - Elizabeth II Hockey Gold Proof (2011)

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

The 2011 50 Pence - Elizabeth II Hockey – 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: Two female hockey players, London 2012 logo above, denomination below.

Common questions

History and design

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

The Hockey 50p is one of 29 designs issued for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, one for each sport, chosen through a design competition open to the general public. The royal proclamation setting out the designs came into force on 12 May 2010, and the coin is dated 2011.

The Royal Mint's figures give a circulating mintage of 1,773,500. Sixteen of the 29 designs have lower figures and twelve have higher ones, which puts Hockey in the more common half of the series. Its nearest neighbours are Wheelchair Rugby (1,765,500) below and Weightlifting (1,879,500) above. For scale, the scarcest design, Football, stands at 1,125,500 and the most common, Archery, at 3,345,500.

The reverse is by Robert Evans, and the Royal Mint says it was selected from more than 30,000 public submissions. Evans was working at the Royal Mint at the time, and he told the Royal Mint Museum that he already had "a few other coins which are in circulation". He entered designs for several sports.

The coin shows two female players at close quarters, one controlling the ball while the other lunges in to challenge. Evans said hockey appealed because he wanted to portray "the heart of the action as well as the conflict" on a small coin. To get the detail right he contacted the University of Glamorgan, which arranged an afternoon in a gymnasium with two international standard players, and he photographed them to work from.

The London 2012 logo sits above the players and 50 PENCE below. 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.