The 2016 Team GB 50p coin – commonly referred to as the swimming 50p – is the only circulating 50p coin that commemorates the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, but how much is the coin worth today?
The latest values on eBay in 2022 indicate that circulated examples of the 2016 Team Gb 50p are worth roughly £1.23 without postage and packaging.
This seems like quite a large value for a coin with a face value of 50p, but is it justified?
Is The 2016 Team GB 50p Coin Rare?
The 2016 Team GB 50p had a circulating mintage of 6,400,000.
If you aren’t familiar with mintage figures then this doesn’t mean much, but in terms of other 50p coins, a mintage figure of this amount is considered to be quite large.
The rarest 50p has a mintage of 210,000, for example, and popular 50p coins such as the Isaac Newton or Flopsy Bunny both have mintages below 2 million.
When you consider other mintage figures it’s quite easy to recognise that the 2016 Team GB 50p is not rare, although it does still sell for well above face value which shows the demand for the coin by collectors.
Other Versions
There were several uncirculated versions of the coin issued for collectors, and these are summarised in the table below with the respective mintage figures.
| Version | Mintage |
| Brilliant Uncirculated | 34,162 |
| Silver Proof | 4,456 |
| Silver Proof Piedfort | 1,296 |
| Gold Proof | 302 |
2020 Team Gb Uncirculated 50p
In 2020, an uncirculated Team GB 50p was issued for collectors by the Royal Mint that caused quite a stir in the news due to the cancellation of the games due to Coronavirus.
The inscription on the coin still reads ‘2020’ despite the games being held in 2021 instead, meaning it is technically an error coin.
This is the only other Team GB 50p coin that has been issued and is still often confused for the 2016 version despite being uncirculated.
Design Of The 2016 Team GB 50p
The design of the coin features a swimmer doing butterfly from a heads-on perspective and was designed by Tim Sharp of Liverpool firm Uniform.
Above the swimmer the Olympic rings can be seen with the Team GB logo above. The obverse design of the coin features the fifth portrait design Queen Elizabeth II designed by Jody Clark.
Which ‘Olympic Swimming 50p’ Is Rare?
The 2016 Team GB 50p is often called the ‘swimming 50p’, and there is a lot of confusion surrounding this coin and the aquatics 50p which was issued as part of the 2012 Olympic 50p coin collection.
Take a look at the design of the aquatics 50p below and it will become quite clear to see where the confusion stems from – both coins were issued during an Olympic games and both have swimmers on the reverse design.
In terms of rarity, the 2012 Aquatics 50p (shown above) is by far the rarer of the two so-called ‘swimming’ 50p coins. It has a mintage of just 2,179,000, which makes it rarer and also more valuable.
Why Was The Coin Minted?
The Team GB 50p was issued in support of Team GB at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. This is quite common for the Royal Mint to do, and another example of this would be the Olympic coin collection that was issued in 2012 for the London Olympics.
Team GB would finish second overall in the medal table with 27 gold medals, 23 silver medals and 17 bronze medals, placing above both China and Russia.
This would be the most successful Olympics for Team GB since 1908, even exceeding the medal count in London 2012.
Final Thoughts
The 2016 Team GB 50p is clearly still in demand by collectors, and although it isn’t the rarest 50p by quite a large margin, it still makes an excellent addition to any collection.
If you happen to come across this coin in your change make sure you don’t mistake it for the 2012 Aquatics 50p.
