Rare Olympic Swimmer 50p coin: how much is it worth?

BIDDERS battle it out on eBay for rare coins, just like Olympians battle it out for medals on the field - and they'll often set their sights on the rare Olympic swimmer 50p.

The rare coin features an image of a swimmer slicing through the water on its reverse.

It's more formally known as the though.

The coin was minted in 2011, along with 28 other designs that each featured a sport played at the 2012 Olympics.

The games were hosted in London that year so the coin collection came out to celebrate the piece of British sporting history.

But how rare is this particular entry in the line-up? We explore how many were minted, and how much the 50p could be worth.

How rare is the Olympic Swimmer 50p?

There are 2,179,000 Olympic swimmer 50ps in circulation according to Change Checker.

In comparison, there's around  regular 50ps, so the rare design only makes up around one hundredth of that size.

On Change Checker's latest scarcity index update the coin sits in 32nd place - but there are at least 21 of the other Olympic 50ps in front of it.

It has got a score of 20 which makes it "less common" though.

The scarcity index ranks each of the coins between one and 100 to indicate how hard they are to find, as well as how in demand they may be.

The higher the number, the rarer the coin - and this can make it more valuable too.

The 50p gained two more points back in November, but it's a long way off some of the top scorers like the Kew Gardens 50p, which has 100 points in contrast.

The second rarest 50p on the scarcity scale is the Olympic Triathlon 50p, which also puts its Aquatics counterpart to shame with 89 points of its own.