Strange British Pound

 Posted 02/21/2012  9:40 pm

I have a number of recent British Pounds just pulled out of loose change when I've visited England (not surprisingly, most are well-circulated). One of them, however, is confusing. It is dated 2000 and has the standard Rank-Broadley portrait of Elizabeth on the obverse. The reverse, however, is not the Welsh Dragon found on the reverse of the 2000 Pound, but rather is the Plantagenet Lions (found on the 1997 Pound with the older portrait and the 2002 pound with the newer portrait). Put another way, it looks exactly like the 2002 pound, but it is clearly and unequivocally dated 2000.





A few more observations:
(1) Under a magnifying glass, the date looks like it might be a double-strike or restrike since the letters are slightly ghosted; none of the rest of the text on the obverse looks like this. The ghosting is not very clear in the scan, but in person, it very clearly looks like 2000 over 2000, not 2000 over 2002.



(2) The other pound coins I have all have standard medallic orientation. The reverse on this coin is more-or-less medallic, but rotated 45 degrees. You can see this in the scans; since the coin is an a 2x2 the relative orientation of the obverse and reverse in the image is not susceptible to accidental rotations.

I simply can't figure out what to make of this. An odd error strike? A really strange counterfeit (would anyone bother to counterfeit a modern pound, and if so, wouldn't you at least get the sides matching?).

Any ideas?

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