2 Pounds - Elizabeth II 50th Anniversary of Liberation; Piedfort

The 50th anniversary of the Liberation of the Channel Islands on 9 May 1945 prompted a wave of commemorative issues across Guernsey, Jersey, and Alderney. The Channel Islands were the only British territory occupied by German forces during the war — a distinction that gives the Liberation date an intensity on these islands that it carries nowhere else in the British Isles. Guernsey issued piedforts alongside standard strikes, a French minting tradition revived in modern commemorative programs that doubles the coin's thickness using the same dies.