2 Dollars - Elizabeth II The Great Tea Race, Silver Piedfort

The Great Tea Race of 1866 remains one of the most celebrated contests in maritime history — seventeen clippers departing Fuzhou within days of each other, racing 16,000 miles to London with the new season's tea. The Ariel and Taeping arrived so closely matched that their captains agreed to split the prize money. The Cutty Sark, so often romanticized as the race's icon, was not even built until 1869.

Piedfort construction gives this piece exactly double the standard planchet thickness, a format with French medieval origins used by modern mints to produce premium collector issues without altering the die design.