5 Pounds - Elizabeth II 4th portrait, XXX Olympiad, Countdown 3

The "Countdown" subseries was commissioned after London won the 2012 Olympic bid in July 2005, with the Royal Mint issuing annual pieces marking the years remaining until the Games opened. This third installment — released in 2009, three years out — belongs to a run that tested public appetite for Olympic commemorative fatigue well before the torch arrived. Collector uptake on the mid-series pieces was notably softer than the bookend issues, making circulated examples of this particular year somewhat harder to locate than the mintage figures alone would suggest.