Watch out for rare Peter Rabbit coins Coveted treasure’s hidden around the area
Ten extremely rare coins have been hidden around the region over the last few days, and whoever finds one will realise they have a very collectable, valuable item to treasure.
Darren H lives in Perth and works in a shop.
But his real passion is collecting coins and he has built up a YouTube channel with close to a thousand followers called ‘Caledonian Coins.’
The 42-year-old has got involved with The Great British Coin Hunt, a ‘people power’ project that began in Devon, to get the only 400 coins in circulation of a rare 50p featuring Beatrix Potter’s lovable character Peter Rabbit out there and in public hands.
Ian Lambert of TheGreatBritishCoinHunt.com has chosen 40 people across the UK, including Darren H from Perth, to help distribute 400 of these previously uncirculated coins which would otherwise not be turning up in your change.
The coin hiders were specifically chosen from a wide range of areas so every normal person in the street would have just as much chance of coming across one.
Darren is the rep for the treasure hunt on the Tayside area: “I was nominated by Ian Lambert of TheGreatBritishCoinHunt.com to distribute 10 2019 Peter Rabbit 50 pences into mainstream circulation,” Darren explained.
There are always coins circulating with a noticeably low mintage that makes them sought after by coin collectors.
For example there are only around three million of the 50 pence coin featuring the suffragettes.
A 50 pence piece with Kew Gardens on it is very hard to find as there are only 210,000 of that.
But The Beatrix Potter bunnies are inarguably far, far lower in mintage, so they are destined to be worth a great deal of money in the years ahead.
The reason is because while The Royal Mint released 13 different Beatrix Potter coins featuring various characters, they didn’t put the 2019 with Peter Rabbit 50 into general circulation.
Collectors wanting to complete their collections have had to buy this year’s coin directly from the Mint, which to many seems unfair.
There are unofficial reports that the 2019 Peter Rabbit 50p has been snapped up for thousands of pounds when offered on eBay.
But before anyone thinks they have struck it rich already, there are many thousands of the Peter Rabbit 50 pence piece issues in 2016, 2017 and 2018, it’s the one with 2019 on the back that is highly sought after.
Darren told the PA yesterday that he has been distributing his allocation of 10 coins across Perthshire and Tayside.
The rule is, he has to put it into a machine (like a parking meter, a photo booth, a supermarket self-service check out station) for the coin to officially enter public circulation.
So the coveted coins won’t just be sitting on a park bench or given to a shop assistant, they will be in a machine that then gets emptied and added to the ordinary change flowing around in public hands.
He revealed that his first drop off was near the Beatrix Potter Gardens in Birnam: “It’s all a bit of fun.
“I felt that the gardens celebrating the Beatrix Potter creatures would be an ideal venue to release one of these Peter Rabbit coins ‘into the wild’.
“I am hoping these coins do get found by some lucky locals.
“But it might be a few days or weeks before they start moving around.
“Since the visit to Birnam I have put four coins out over the weekend and five more went out on Monday.
“The places I have put them out are one in Birnam, two in Kinross - at the motorway service, the amusement arcade and at Sainsbury’s - and two in Dundee at HMS Unicorn and the Kingsway Retail Park.”
He revealed the other five coins are in Perth and Scone.
“I went about distributing all over Perth and also near Scone Palace.
“The Stone of Destiny campaign has been on my mind...you can find out more from the wee video I made on YouTube.”
Ian from the GreatBritishCoinHunt.com concluded: “The truth is that these special coins may be shipped off to entirely different parts of the country altogether.
“It could even take months for any to appear in our everyday change or it could all happen far sooner. Since nothing like this has ever happened before, a lot of how things will pan out is guesswork.
“However, when these sought after rabbits do begin making an appearance, it will be intriguing to hear where they were found and just how long their journey took.”