For the third year in sucession the Royal Mint is launching a £100 face-value coin, this time depicting a view of Trafalgar Square, with Nelsons Column and one of the sculptor Edwin Lanseer’s superb bronze lions. It isn’t a new piece of artwork, rather a reworking of one of the four designs in 2014’s Portrait of Britain series. In that case the coin had an unusual colour ‘wash’ over selective parts of the reverse, but it’s cleanly struck here. Previous coins depicted Buckingham Palace in 2015, and Big Ben in 2014, also based on previously issued artwork from the Portrait set. Just Tower Bridge remains, so it’s likely that design will adorn the 2017 entrant.

Mounted to an informative card as before, it’s actually a nice design undertaken by the engravers, Laura Clancy and Glyn Davies, in a softer, less defined style than usual. We think it works well, although it’s a shame the two ounce coin remains at 40mm diameter instead of taking advantage of the extra weight to expand the coin surface area. A penalty of it being a face value design no doubt. The obverse is the new one from Jody Clark.

Available to purchase from the Royal Mint website right now, the mintage is limited to 45,000 units, down from the 50,000 of the previous releases. There has been rising concern about the ability to cash these in for face value and the mint has started incorporating some notes in their coin description to clarify matters, which we’ve reproduced below.