In 1978 the Royal Mint struck 72,005,500 fifty pence pieces, almost half as many again as the year before, when the figure was 49,536,000. The heptagon that had replaced the ten shilling note in 1969 was being produced on an ever larger scale.

The shape is a piece of engineering: this was the world’s first equilateral curve heptagon coin. Each side is an arc centred on the opposite corner, so the coin has the same width in every direction and a machine accepts it however it lands. At the same time the heptagon is easy to tell from round coins by sight and by touch.

The reverse carries Christopher Ironside’s Britannia with the words NEW PENCE; the obverse shows Elizabeth II in Arnold Machin’s portrait, used on the fifty pence from 1969 to 1984. Britannia is one of the oldest subjects of British coinage, present on coins since 1672.

Grade VF: a circulated coin with wear on the raised parts of Britannia and the portrait, while the main details and inscriptions remain sharp.

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