Tom Kitten made his first appearance on an official UK coin in 2017, in the new series of 50p coins featuring Beatrix Potter’s characters that the Royal Mint issued after the 2016 series for the author’s 150th anniversary. According to the Royal Mint, the four new designs came about because the nation’s love for Beatrix Potter and her little tales proved as strong as ever.

Royal Mint engraver Emma Noble, who designed every coin of the 2016 and 2017 series, shows Tom facing forward in his finest clothes, which underline his mischievous nature; the reverse reads TOM KITTEN. The obverse carries Jody Clark’s fifth portrait of Elizabeth II in the George IV State Diadem, used on British coins from 2015. Noble’s work for the Royal Mint also includes commemoratives for Remembrance and for the Queen’s coronation.

The Tale of Tom Kitten was published by Frederick Warne in 1907, when Potter had owned Hill Top farm in the Lake District for two years. Tom and his sisters Moppet and Mittens have no love for smart clothes and would much rather play in the garden, so the Sunday best on the coin reads as a gentle joke at the hero’s expense, one that anyone who knows the story will enjoy.

The 2017 series comprised four coins: Peter Rabbit, Mr. Jeremy Fisher, Tom Kitten and Benjamin Bunny. All of them were part of the Great British Coin Hunt, which invited people to look for the coins in their change and collect them in an official album. The Tom Kitten coin had a circulation mintage of 9,500,000, the lowest of the 2017 four, the same role Jemima Puddle-Duck plays in the 2016 series.

UNC (Uncirculated) means the coin has never been in circulation: there is no wear, the original mint lustre is intact, and only minor marks from storage in bank bags are acceptable. The details of the kitten’s outfit and face keep a crisp relief.

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