Guide

Verified UK Coin Mintage Figures, With Sources

Mintage numbers are copied from site to site, and errors travel with them. This page lists the 12 UK coin mintages that MyCoinage has verified by hand against the Royal Mint and reconciling sources, each with the reason the figure was accepted. The same list is asserted against our live catalogue every night; the live value is shown beside the verified one so you can see for yourself that they agree.

Reviewed by Connor Jones, Editor Last updated: · 12 figures, all matching the live catalogue
How to read this. Verified is the figure a person checked against a published source. Catalogue is what our database holds right now. They should be identical; if they are not, the nightly check has already flagged it and the verified figure is the one to trust. Figures are circulating mintages unless the note says otherwise.

The verified figures

CoinVerified mintageCatalogueSource and reasoning
50 Pence - Elizabeth II 3rd portrait; European Community (1992) 109,000 109,000 ✓ Royal Mint circulating figure for the dual-dated 1992-93 EU Presidency 50p — the lowest 50p mintage ever; the 158,628 that Numista carries alongside it is not the RM circulating figure
50 Pence - Charles III Atlantic Salmon (2023) 200,000 200,000 ✓ Royal Mint, no-privy circulating strike
50 Pence - Elizabeth II 4th portrait; Kew Gardens (2009) 210,000 210,000 ✓ Royal Mint circulating figure, universally published
10 Pence - Elizabeth II 5th portrait; W - World Wide Web (2018) 220,000 220,000 ✓ A-Z 2018: uniform 220,000/letter (NOT 2.6M — that was the all-letter launch total)
10 Pence - Elizabeth II 5th portrait; Q - Queuing (2018) 220,000 220,000 ✓ A-Z 2018: uniform 220,000/letter
10 Pence - Elizabeth II 5th portrait; A - Angel of the North (2018) 220,000 220,000 ✓ A-Z 2018: uniform 220,000/letter
2 Pounds - Elizabeth II 4th portrait; XVII Commonwealth Games - Northern Ireland (2002) 485,500 485,500 ✓ rarest circulating bimetallic £2
2 Pounds - Elizabeth II 4th portrait; XVII Commonwealth Games - Wales (2002) 588,500 588,500 ✓ CWG set
2 Pounds - Elizabeth II 4th portrait; Commonwealth Games - England (2002) 650,500 650,500 ✓ CWG set
2 Pounds - Elizabeth II 4th portrait; XVII Commonwealth Games - Scotland (2002) 771,750 771,750 ✓ CWG set
50 Pence - Elizabeth II 4th portrait; Football (2011) 1,125,500 1,125,500 ✓ Royal Mint confirmed since 2012 (often misquoted lower)
50 Pence - Elizabeth II 5th portrait; Peter Rabbit (2016) 9,700,000 9,700,000 ✓ Royal Mint circulating figure — both site guides previously carried wrong values (9.6M and 9,602,000), fixed Sep 2026

How a figure gets onto this list

The list is a tripwire, not a catalogue. It holds the coins whose mintages are most often misquoted, most valuable to get right, or that have been corrupted before. A figure is added only when:

  1. it appears in a Royal Mint publication, or can be reconciled by arithmetic from one (for example, per-letter A–Z figures that sum exactly to the published launch total);
  2. the reason for choosing it over any competing figure is written down beside it; and
  3. the person adding it has checked the live catalogue matches.

From then on a nightly job compares the list with the database and raises an alarm on any mismatch. Mintages for the rest of the catalogue, several thousand coins, come from Numista and the Royal Mint and are shown on each coin’s page and on the mintage figures hub; they are good data, but they have not had this second, human check.

Why mintages go wrong

The Kew Gardens 50p is the cautionary tale. Its circulating mintage, 210,000, is one of the best-known numbers in British collecting. In August 2026 an import fault rewrote it in our catalogue to 338,364, along with 234 other coins, and nobody noticed for days because the new number looked plausible. The fix was this list. The lesson is general: any figure that is re-fetched automatically from an upstream source can be silently overwritten, and only a figure that a person has pinned down, with the reason, is safe to cite.

Frequently asked questions

Why do mintage figures differ between websites?
Three reasons account for almost every discrepancy. First, circulating versus total: the Royal Mint publishes the number released into circulation, while some catalogues add brilliant-uncirculated packs, proofs and silver versions to that figure. Second, launch totals versus per-coin figures: the 2018 A–Z 10p launch was announced as 2.6 million coins across 26 letters, and that total is sometimes quoted as if it were the mintage of each letter, when the Royal Mint’s per-letter figure is 220,000. Third, plain copying errors that propagate from one site to the next. Every entry on this page records which figure is used and why.
Where do the figures on this page come from?
From config/canonical_facts.php, a small file in the MyCoinage codebase in which each mintage was checked by a person against the Royal Mint’s published figures and, where sources disagreed, reconciled by arithmetic or against Change Checker and Coin Hunter. The note beside each figure is the reason it was accepted. Entries are added only with a verified external source, so the list is deliberately short.
How are the figures kept correct?
A nightly integrity check compares every figure here with the live catalogue and raises an alarm on any mismatch. The check exists because the catalogue is periodically refreshed from upstream sources, and in August 2026 a scraper fault silently inflated 235 mintages, including showing the Kew Gardens 50p at 338,364 against the true 210,000. This page shows the live catalogue value alongside the verified one, so any drift is visible to you as well as to us.
Does a low mintage mean a coin is valuable?
It is the biggest single factor for modern circulating coins but not the only one. Demand matters: the Kew Gardens 50p is worth more than its mintage alone predicts because it is famous, while several coins with similar mintages are worth a fraction as much. Survival matters for older coins, where the number struck says little about the number left. Our guide to what makes a coin rare explains the other factors, and the Scarcity Index combines mintage with observed sales.
Can I cite these figures?
Yes. Cite the figure with its source note and link to this page, which is updated whenever the underlying file changes. For example: “Royal Mint circulating mintage of the 2009 Kew Gardens 50p: 210,000 (MyCoinage, verified UK mintage figures).” Our press page has more on attribution.
Why is the 1992–93 EU Presidency 50p listed at 109,000 when other sites say 158,628?
Because 109,000 is the Royal Mint’s circulating figure for the dual-dated coin, which makes it the lowest-mintage 50p ever released into circulation, below Kew Gardens. The 158,628 figure that appears alongside it in some catalogues is not the circulating mintage. The entry’s note records this so the distinction is not lost the next time the catalogue is refreshed.

Further reading

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Reviewed by Connor Jones, Editor. Every MyCoinage guide is fact-checked against realised auction sales before publication: read our editorial policy.
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