Zooming in a bit, it appears to be a fourth leg, projecting out from the hip ring. It does, however, have a dangly wang between its legs.
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Great, someone made some garbage to sell instead of doing it properly. I can only imagine the collectiblity and value is reduced because of this carelessness.
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At least you can be guaranteed that it will be worth £2.
Whether £2 will be worth anything next year is another matter.
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I assume coin collecting works similarly in the UK. That a mint produces a number of uncirculated sets sold at a premium. This provides additional revenue for a mint. (I don’t have any data on if that is significant revenue, but the mark-up versus the face value is significant)
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That cover art reminds me of one of the wacky details about the original novel; the revelation that the Martians had an experimental flying machine was even more shocking than the revelation that they had the technology to stage an interplanetary invasion. And the novel was published only five years before the Wright Brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk!
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The quadpods rather than tripods are inexcusable, but I don’t see how a top hat contradicts the text. A top hat can have a wide brim just as any other type can.
Ah, thanks. That was confusing me as well. I appreciate the commemorative sentiment, and I don’t want to be a hater, but that’s just bad design work all around.
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I wonder actually if this was something to avoid any copyright issues over the fighting machine design; but, having checked, the book is public domain.
@lava I’d like to see a version that fits the description in the book, where the narrator describes them as moving “like a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground”.
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Four legs good, three legs bad!.. Oh wait, maybe that was another book.
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Happy to see people upset about inconsequential ephemera. Yay 2021.
Also, the coin looks cool. Who cares how many legs?
As long as they don’t mess up any Heinlein stuff I don’t care 
Looking at the coin, from the bottom of the spaceship body (the funnel) to the top (the saucer) I see a tentacle, then three legs connected to the funnel, and then another leg(?) or maybe an arm coming from the saucer. This fifth appendage doesn’t look like the three legs. I don’t understand this extra leg or arm but it is distinct from the three legs. Are we not seeing the same thing?
If you do what I did - google War of the Worlds book covers you will be treated to dozens of different versions.
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The “dangly wang” seems inspired by the Tripods of John Christopher’s “The White Mountains” series (also made into a BBC series in the 1980s)
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DC Wells
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The artist is American. Think of it as the Hollywood reboot.
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Frankly, I like the flying manta rays from the George Pal version best - easily the best bit of the whole film, but that’s neither here nor there.
(They realized pretty early in pre production that there was no way to make anything halfway convincing tripod-ish with the resources they had. Better do something completely different that works, good decision.)
ETA:
https://www.celebratewoking.info/visit/heritage/legacywellsinwoking/martiantripod
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They pretty much did that in the CW “Berlanti-verse”. The Flash’s Harrison Wells, “H. Wells”
Jeff Wayne’s Musical War of the Wells shout out! They filmed a performance of it in 2006.
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