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Whenever new banknotes are issued, it causes quite a stir in the collecting community, with serious collectors rushing to secure the notes with the lowest serial numbers.

The Bank of England generally hold back some of the notes with the earliest serial numbers, donating them to the monarch, people or institutions that were involved in the development of the note, but others can fetch hefty sums at auction!

Notes under the hammer

Spink & Sons recently held four auctions for each denomination of the new King Charles III banknotes to raise funds for charity, and a whopping £914,127 was raised overall!

The proceeds from the auctions will be shared between 10 charities that have been chosen by the Bank of England:

• Childhood Trust
• The Trussell Trust
• Shout
• Carers UK
• Demelza
• WWF-UK
• The Brain Tumour Charity
• London’s Air Ambulance Charity
• Child Bereavement UK
• The Samaritans

At the auction for the King Charles III £10 banknotes, a single £10 note with the serial number HB01 000002 sold for an astonishing £17,000!

The £50 banknote auction even broke the record for the highest lot sold in a Bank of England banknote auction. A sheet of 40 £50 banknotes sold for £26,000 – 13 times their face value!

Which serial numbers should you be looking out for?

Whilst the very first banknotes aren’t released into general circulation, there are other serial numbers that are also considered collectable.

JMW Turner £20 Notes

As the polymer £20 note featured JMW Turner on the reverse, some serial numbers matching key dates relating to the painter became highly collectible. For example, 23 041775 represents Turner’s date of birth, whilst 19 121851 relates to his death and 17 751851 would be his birth and death combined.

True Turner fans might also look for 18 381839 representing the date he painted ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ (which featured on the new £20 note) and the date the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy respectively.

Alan Turing £50 Notes

The £50 note features famous scientist and mathematician, Alan Turing, and similarly to the £20 note, certain serial numbers matching key dates relating to Alan Turing became collectable.

Serial numbers such as 23 061912 (which represents Turing’s date of birth), 07 061954 (which relates to his death) and 09 071941 (which represents the date that the enigma code was cracked by Turing and his team at Bletchley Park during WW2) are all ones to look out for. .

Others include AK47, due to the machine gun connotations, and 007 which could be desirable to James Bond fans.

The hunt is on!

With this news that King Charles III banknotes have recently sold for much more than face value, the hunt is on to find others with interesting or collectable serial numbers.

If you’ve come across any King Charles III banknotes, let us know in the comments where you found it and whether it’s got an interesting or rare serial number!

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Safely store your banknote collection

If you do have any King Charles III banknotes in your collection that you don’t fancy parting with, you can securely store them in the Change Checker Complete Polymer Banknote Collecting Pack, which now includes spaces for King Charles III banknotes!

Secure your Complete Polymer Banknote Collecting Pack >>