Posts Tagged ‘Rare coin’
Do you own the rarest UK coins in circulation?
Earlier this year I made some charts about Britain’s rarest circulating coins. They proved really popular on our Facebook page, so I thought I’d bring them all together for you here in one blog post.
How many of these rare coins do you have in your collection?
There were only 485,500 Northern Ireland 2002 Commonwealth Games £2 coins minted, that’s just 0.1% of all the £2 coins ever struck to date!
The rarest £1 coin is the 2011 Edinburgh design. Could it be worth something one day?
Olympic 50ps have long been a favourite amongst collectors, but did you know there are only 1,125,500 Football fifty pence pieces? It’s definitely the rare one to look out for!
Last but definitely not least, the Kew Gardens 50p steals the show. Just 210,000 were struck and they made headlines earlier in the year when a handful reached a valuation of over £100 on eBay – surely making them some of Britain’s most valuable circulating coins (for now at least!)
So remember to keep checking your change – you just might own one of the UK’s rarest coins!
If you’ve found some of the coins mentioned in these charts, why not list them in your online collection at www.changechecker.org – you can even swap with your fellow Change Checkers to complete your collection!
This 50p just sold for £820.00
Finding a coin which is worth a small fortune is the stuff of dreams for every Change Checker. You may remember the excitement over the rarity of the Kew Gardens 50p earlier this year and the bidding frenzy that occurred on eBay shortly afterwards.
Well now there is a coin which has eclipsed the Kew Gardens, both in terms of scarcity, and the sheer scale of money changing hands.
This week, a UK 50 pence piece sold on eBay for £820. Or to put it another way, 1,640 times its face value!
It appears to be an ordinary Aquatics Olympic 50p at first glance, but this coin has a special quality which collectors desire more than anything else: an error.
And the good news is, there are more out there to be found!
The rare Aquatics Olympic 50p sold on eBay this week for £820.00
In 2011 the Aquatics Olympic 50p depicting a swimmer underwater was redesigned by the Royal Mint to make the swimmer’s face more visible. However, before the change was made, a small number of coins were struck with the original design.
The coin on the left is the rare original design, with waves passing over the swimmer’s face
The added sense of excitement and anticipation over this particular error is that nobody knows exactly how many of the original coins were ever struck.
Their rare appearance at auction (and only so far in their original packaging) along with the astronomical amounts which buyers are happy to pay, supports the theory that there are very few around.
The 29 Olympic designs are now commonplace in our day-to-day life, so this coin ultimately is just a normal 50p which you would happily pass over the counter to pay for something. Blink and you would miss that small detail which is worth so much to coin collectors.
But the Aquatics Olympic 50p error is the latest example of why you should always carefully check what’s in your change – there really could be treasure hidden in your pocket!
Do you have an Aquatics Olympic 50p?
You can add it to your collection on the Change Checker App here
The 2p worth 67,850 times its face value
The world’s only silver-coloured two pence piece was sold on Friday at Charterhouse Auctions in Dorset for £1,357 – equivalent to 67,580 times its face value.
The silver-coloured 2p coin was discovered in 1988
The lucky owner, David Didcock, discovered the coin in 1988 while readying the till at the petrol station he owned at the time.
The silver colour stood out immediately, and recognising its significance, he sent it off to the Royal Mint who verified its authenticity.
Since then it has been wrapped in cotton wool and kept it in a drawer for 26 years before David finally decided it was the right time to sell.
One of a kind
It is believed that the errant coin came into existence when a single cupro-nickel blank used for 5p and 10p pieces was accidentally mixed up with a batch of bronze blanks intended for striking 2p coins.
This is not the first time a Royal Mint error has dramatically inflated the value of a coin. In 2008 when the reverse of the 20p coin changed to the Royal Shield design, around 100,000 coins were accidentally struck with the previous obverse die, and as a result there was no date on the coin. The story of the undated 20p took the collecting world by storm, and even today they are selling for in excess of £50.
Another famous error is the 1983 Two Pence which was incorrectly struck with the old wording ‘New Pence’. It is not known how many have made it into circulation, but if sold at auction it is thought they could be worth several hundred pounds.
The minting process is never completely exempt from human error, so remember to always check your change carefully. Mistakes happen, and when it comes to coins, these mistakes can often be worth a lot money to sharp-eyed collectors.