CASH IN WITH RARE COINS
You could have a tidy windfall sitting in your purse or wallet right now. Felicity Hannah and Will Hayward report...
REMEMBER that 20p coin without the date on that was selling for hundreds of pounds? Or the 2p coin that is still selling for a small fortune? If you work in a bar, café or shop, the chances are some of these hese coins are passing through your ur fifinfingers every day and you are missing it.
We’ve put together a list of the most valuable coins to help you check: COMMONWEALTH £2 A special coin minted to commemorate the e Northern Ireland 2002 02 Commonwealth Games s is one of the rarest £2 out t there, as fewer than 500,000 0 were minted. They can sell ll online for anything ng between £15 and £25. “TYPO” GUY FAWKES COIN The Royal Mint released a commemorative £2 in 2005 on the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder plot but t some of those had a slightly embarrassing typo and read “Pemember, pememem member the Fifth of November”. e mber”. They sell online for between ween £5 and £7, typically. CHARLES DICKENS £2 These were released in 2012 to commemorate the 200th birthday of the famous author, with the reverse of the coin featuring the titles of his better known books. . These can now sell online ne for around £4, sometimes im mes more if in particularly good od o condition. OLYMPIC SWIMMER 50p 0p The original Olympic pic aquatic coin with the he wavy lines across the e swimmer’s face has s become very collectible, , as only 600 were released before the design was changed. Six x hundred is a tiny, tiny ny amount in the world of coin collecting and so these coins are changing hands for upwards of o £800. PETER RABBIT 50p These charming Beatrix Potter coins were released only to a limited number o of attractions and National T Trust properties and the Ro Royal Mint has not revealed pre precisely how many it has mint minted. KEW GARDEN GA A 50p The ThThThThe 505 pence coin stamped with the Kew Gardens Pagoda is re relatively rare, with just 2 210,000 minted, compared t to a standard minting of around five million. That means they can sell for £30-£50 if you can find a c collector. At A their peak demand they we were selling online e for as much mu as £120. THE EURO EUR RO 50p A 1992 50p 50 piece featuring ng 12 sta stars and representnting th the EC Single Marrket can sell for r around aro £50-£55 on online. These are th the old-fashio ioned chunky 50 p pences, so you ar are unlikely to o tur turn one up in your ur cha change, but it could d be worth checking any longterm pe penny jars for. WWF 50p This commemorative coin is selling for more than £10, even if it has been in circulation a while and is no longer in (literal) mint condition.
Be careful when buying, as some of these standard coins are being advertised at massively inflated prices.
However, a few of the rarer editions are selling for hundreds of pounds – so look carefully when comparing.
The launch of the new £1 coin meant that there are very few valuable versions out there. But that doesn’t mean there are none. The two key things to look out for are socalled “trial coins” – these were sent out early to shops and businesses so they could check all their vending machines and tills worked properly with the new design.
You can spot them by their dates – if you see a coin with a 2015 or 2016 date you could be on to a winner. SILVER 2p It was recently suggested that the UK might simply stop using pennies in the future, as they are effectively worthless.
However, there are a few coppers that are far from worthless.
Poppy collectors were given a 2p coin that they assumed was fake because it was silver. However, it turned out to be an incredibly rare and valuable “minting error”, where a blank 10p was accidentally cast as a 2p. The Royal British Legion auctioned it for more than £1,400 – but the donor probably didn’t even notice. All 2p coins minted before 1982 say “new pence”, while those stamped after that date should say “two pence”. However, an early error means that a number of 2p coins from 1983 still show “new pence”, meaning coins with that year stamped on can sell for several hundreds of pounds. ALPHABET 10ps The original 10p was first issued in 1968 as a larger, silver coin. In 1992 the 10p was made smaller, lighter and generally more convenient – these are the ones classed as legal tender today.
In March 2018, the Royal Mint introduced a collection of 26 alphabet 10p coins into circulation – initially printing 2.6 million of them, with each representing a different British tradition.
This included the Post Office, zebra crossings and even cricket – but coin experts at Change Checker believe five of them will become the most popular, and therefore the hardest to get hold of.
Their list of ones to watch out for include: J for James Bond, E for English Breakfast, F for Fish and Chips, T for Teapot, L for Loch Ness Monster. DATELESS 20ps Back in 2008 the Royal Mint printed around 250,000 20p pieces with no date on them.
The coins are legal tender and so they can be used to buy a Freddo (assuming you have another 5p). However, you’d be better off selling them as they are still fetching as much as £100 online. 5p COINS FROM 1993 The new 5p was one of the first of a new breed of coin introduced in 1990, significantly smaller and lighter than the old coin it replaced – it was minted in massive numbers.
In the first year more than a billion were struck, and subsequent mintages were in the hundreds of millions.
But while that means most are worth, well, 5p, there are two valuable ones.
If you see 1993 on a 5p coin, keep it. It’s the only year tens of millions weren’t produced, with none released for general circulation and fewer than 60,000 made for annual sets.
Sadly, you won’t be retiring on the money you make from finding one – with recent examples sold on eBay going for no more than £13.50 - but that’s still an awful lot more than 5p. RARE 5p ERROR COINS FROM 2008 2008 wasn’t a good year for the Royal Mint. It’s the year they famously released 250,000 date-free 20ps.
It’s also the year an unknown number of 5ps were struck where the back is upside down compared with the front.
These are incredibly rare, and sell for more than £50 online, so it’s always worth checking them.