The bimetallic £2, familiar to every Briton today, reached people’s pockets only in the summer of 1998, and the coin of that year was the first £2 to carry Ian Rank-Broadley’s portrait of Elizabeth II. Because of production difficulties the 1997-dated coins were held back and released together with the 1998 date on 15 June 1998, but they still bore Raphael Maklouf’s portrait.

The bimetallic format was a deliberate choice. A 1994 coinage review recommended a circulating £2, and after consulting vending machine operators, the public and the Royal National Institute of Blind People, the decision was clear: a coin with a cupro-nickel centre and a nickel-brass ring is easy to distinguish, harder to counterfeit, and the raised join between the two parts can be felt by blind people.

The reverse is by Bruce Rushin, a Norfolk art teacher who won an open competition. Its concentric circles tell the story of technology, from the Iron Age through the Industrial Revolution and the computer age to the internet. The edge reads STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS, words from Isaac Newton’s 1676 letter to Robert Hooke.

Until then the £2 was known only from the single-colour nickel-brass commemoratives of 1986–1996, begun with the 1986 Commonwealth Games issue and hardly ever seen in pockets. The bimetallic £2 made the denomination a genuine circulating coin for the first time, and as early as 1999 it received its first commemorative design, for the Rugby World Cup.

Rank-Broadley’s effigy was the Queen’s fourth coinage portrait and stayed on United Kingdom coins until 2015; the initials IRB below the bust are the sculptor’s signature. The legend ELIZABETH II DEI GRA REG FID DEF stands for «Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God Queen, Defender of the Faith». In a £2 date run this coin opens the period of the technology design with the new portrait, which lasted until 2015.

Grade F-VF: a circulated coin with wear ranging from even, pronounced wear (F) to wear noticeable on the high points (VF), while the concentric circles, portrait and inscriptions remain legible.

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