ROYAL MINT STRIKES JOHN LENNON COIN

John Lennon has joined the succession of great Britons who have been immortalised on a coin.

And although money can't buy you love, the £5 John Lennon coin is now available from the Royal Mint - priced at £44.99.

The Beatles singer, whose hits include Penny Lane, easily won the public vote for the next "Great Briton" to be put on a coin, beating a line-up of historical figures including Jane Austen and John Logie Baird.

To read the complete article, see: Lennon joins great Brits on a coin

Lennon —whose songwriting credits include "Imagine" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" — came out far ahead of author Jane Austen and several other figures in the balloting.

"It's entirely fitting that John Lennon has been chosen by the public in what would have been his 70th year," said Dave Knight, director of Commemorative Coin at the Royal Mint. "The massive proportion of the vote he received shows clearly just how much his untimely death still resonates with the nation. He ranks alongside, and even ahead of, some of the greatest names in history."

The former Beatle will join William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale among British luminaries whose images have graced special coins.

The issuing of the silver commemorative coin marks one more step in the British establishment's posthumous embrace of Lennon, whose political stance and open drug use brought him into conflict with authorities in the late 1960s before he moved to New York, where he was murdered in 1980.

The airport at Lennon's home town of Liverpool has been named after Lennon, and there is a statue of him in the city center.

The limited edition coin shows Lennon with long hair and sideburns and his trademark round glasses. It will have a face value of 5 pounds ($8) but will be sold for 44.99 pounds. Only 5,000 will be offered for sale.

The Royal Mint also plans to produce a single coin in 24 karat gold that will be given to Lennon's estate.

To read the complete article, see: Silver Commemorative John Lennon Coin Issued by United Kingdom Royal Mint (www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=42172)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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