2 Pounds - Elizabeth II 4th portrait, 1 oz Fine Silver

The 2013 Royal Mint Lunar series continued a program launched in 1999 to parallel the Chinese Lunar calendar cycle — though the British version ran a full twelve-year cycle aimed squarely at the bullion collector market rather than domestic circulation. This piece corresponds to the Year of the Snake, the sixth animal in the cycle.

Ian Rank-Broadley's fourth portrait of Elizabeth II, introduced in 1998, was by this point fifteen years into service on British coinage — the longest run of any of his predecessors' effigies in the modern decimal series.