5 Pounds - Elizabeth II 4th portrait, London Paralympics

Issued to mark the London 2012 Paralympic Games, this crown-sized piece was part of a broader Royal Mint programme that made the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics the most extensively commemorated Games in British coinage history. Over 60 individual designs were produced across the series. The Paralympics issue specifically reflects the growing official parity given to the Games — a political shift that had been building since the Seoul 1988 cycle, when Paralympic and Olympic host cities were first formally unified.