Weightlifting 50p

Introducing the Weightlifting 50p Coin

In anticipation for the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games, the Royal Mint released a 50p coin series in 2011 featuring different Olympic and Paralympic sports. Weightlifting is the 27^th coin in the 29-coin series. Weightlifting has been a competition throughout all of civilisation but became an Olympic sport in the first Olympic games in 1896. Originally, the event had ‘one-hand’ and ‘two-hand’ events, but after the 1928 Games, ‘one-hand’ events were removed from the program. Today’s Olympic Weightlifting event focuses on two exercises: the clean and jerk and the snatch. In the 2012 London Games, China ranked first in the standings with seven medals total, five were gold. 

Weightlifting 2011 50p

The Weightlifting 50p was designed by Rob Shakespeare, a police officer from Manchester and previous weightlifter. It features a simple outline of a weightlifter in the squat position, holding a barbell with weights. At the top centre is the 2012 Olympic logo. 

The Royal Mint Museum interviewed Rob about his design’s inspiration. “My inspiration was from seeing people do it in the gym arenas where I’ve been myself and I didn’t want to do the atypical design of someone holding aloft a weight because it’s a kind of generic one that everybody sees so I thought I would do something a bit different and when you do a squat In weightlifting it’s quite a powerful move because all the muscles in your legs are used and its quite an iconic thing I thought so I tried to translate that into the design and instead of drawing because I’m not the best at drawing so I thought I would just do the outline to see what the shape was.”

(Caption: Pictogram for the Weightlifting event at the 2012 London Olympics)

How Much is the Weightlifting 50p Coin Worth?

As of August 2019, the highest price sold for a single Weightlifting 50p was £24.00 for a Silver Proof version with a Certificate of Authenticity. For a single uncirculated base metal version, the highest price sold was £6.99. It was sealed in its original packaging. 

How Many Weightlifting 50p Coins Were Made in Circulation?

The Royal Mint made 1,879,500 Weightlifting 50p coins. 

Other Versions of the Weightlifting 50p Coin

The Weightlifting 50p coin was minted in three versions, the circulation version (or base metal version), Brilliant Uncirculated version, and a Silver Proof version. The Silver Proof version has a mintage of 30,000. 

Other Olympic Coins

Did you know that the Olympic coins were all designed by the public? Want to learn more? Chancery Coins has created a guide for you to learn all about these beautiful pieces of history.

There are other commemorative Olympic coins as well. There’s the Team GB 50p minted for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics and the 2008 £2 coin created for the 100^th anniversary of the 1908 London Olympics. If you want to collect more 2012 Olympic coins, there are also the £2 coin series for the Handover Ceremonies and the £5 coin series counting down to the 2012 London Olympics.