Only one gold example of this 50 pence exists: it was struck for the designer, sculptor Timothy Lees. The Royal Mint did the same for each of the 29 designs in the 2011 Olympic series, leaving collectors the circulating version — here in a state with no trace of circulation.

Lees is a stone carver with a sculptor’s background, and he built the coin’s shallow relief as a piece of sculpture: crossing lines and overlapping layers create depth. He had only paddled casually himself, but he drew on Olympic slalom courses and, in his words, wanted to capture their energy on the coin. A paddler negotiates the course, with the London 2012 emblem above and «50 PENCE» below.

Canoe slalom has had an unusual Olympic history. It debuted at the 1972 Munich Games, with races held on the Eiskanal in Augsburg, then vanished from the programme for twenty years and only returned in 1992, on the course at La Seu d’Urgell during the Barcelona Games. It has been on the Olympic programme ever since.

The coin belongs to a series of 29 fifty-pence pieces, one for every sport of the London Olympic and Paralympic Games; the designs were chosen through an open competition that drew almost 30,000 entries. A total of 2,166,500 canoeing coins were struck for circulation.

UNC grade: the coin has never circulated, shows no wear and retains its mint lustre, with only minor bag marks possible. In an Olympic series album, an example like this shows Lees’s design with the crispness of line it was meant to have.

This coin is one of the items in the VPcoins catalogue, which brings together commemorative, circulation and bullion coins from around the world.