A RARE pattern on your King Charles 50p coin could increase its worth by a whopping 36 times.
It is always worth checking your pockets for loose change because some unique coins can quickly become a collector’s item – and sell for huge profits.
The Royal Mint, the official maker of British coins, regularly puts limited edition pieces into general circulation.
And because there’s only a limited amount they can sell for multiple times their face value.
In some cases, extremely rare 50p pieces have sold for a whopping £950.
Since 2022, 50p coins featuring King Charles III have been widely circulated in Britain’s economy – and some have become sought-after collectables now it seems.
One of them has now sold for £18 – 36 times its face value.
The coin in question is the amazing King Charles Atlantic Salmon 50p that was first missed in 2023.
The Atlantic Salmon coin has been dubbed by the online coin site Copes Coins as one of the “most talked about coins in the coin community”, RedditchAdvisor reports.
The coin is marked with an engraving of salmon fish jumping out of Atlantic ocean water.
A spokesperson for Copes Coins said: “The current mintage rumours estimate that only 500,000 of these coins were released into general circulation in November 2023.
“Since then, these coins have become much harder to find in your change, and prices on online marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon have continued to rise, fuelling the speculation that the 2023 Atlantic Salmon 50p is to become one of the rarest coins to enter circulation in the last 15 years.”
Many coins can be worth much more when sold on eBay as part of a collection.
However, sometimes you’ll get better individual prices if another enthusiast needs your coin to complete their collection.
The design of the coin, its condition and whether or not the coin is in circulation also affects how much it could be worth.
You can easily figure out how rare a coin is, by checking its mintage figures.
This relates to how many coins were produced by The Royal Mint.
If a coin has a low mintage, it means there’s less in circulation and is therefore rarer and it could potentially be worth more than its face value.
Either way, you’ll want to keep an eye out for some in particular which can sell for big numbers.
If you’re lucky enough to pick up a rare coin in your spare change, it could go for hundreds of pounds depending on how rare it is.
You should check how much the coin is selling for on eBay.
Search the full name of the coin, select the “sold” listing and then toggle the search to “highest value”.
It will give you an idea of the amount of money that the coin is going for.
But remember, a buyer could always pull out so the coin may not have gone for the price it says it has.
And watch out for fakes too.
You can also use an online tool that gives you an estimate of how much it could be worth on eBay, as well as any other rare coins you have.
Coin Hunter gives you an estimated valuation of your coin based on the average of the most recent sales, as well as a range of how much you can expect it to fetch.
Plus Change Checker’s Scarcity Index will give you a good idea of how rare a coin is.
The rare Blue Peter Olympic 50p has been flogged on eBay for £205 in the past.
The coin shows an athlete doing the high jump and was drawn by nine-year-old Florence Jackson after winning a competition on the kid’s TV show.
Plus, one seller managed to pocket a whopping £63,000 flogging his Battle of Hasting’s 50p too.
So-called ‘error coins’ tend to be worth a lot too, because there’s rarely more than a few thousand of them in circulation.
One 50p that was mistakenly struck twice sold for as much as £510 on eBay because it was rare.
It’s not only 50ps either – a rare error 10p coin sold for over 1,000 times more than its face value on eBay in the past.
Likewise, there are several rare £2 coins in circulation which could be worth just under £50.
You might think that old coins go for the most – but new ones can go for some big sums too.
In 2019, the Royal Mint re-released sets of five of the rarest and most popular 50ps to celebrate half a decade of the coin.
The new coins are made with old designs including Kew Gardens, Girl Guides and Scouts, but are stamped with the 2019 date which could make them super valuable among collectors.
The £90 collectors’ proof sets sold out in February 2019, but you can still get uncirculated sets for £45 directly from the Royal Mint.
This year has seen an influx of special edition Harry Potter coins, as well as those with the heads of former monarchs on them too.
Meanwhile, the first commemorative £2 coins featuring King Charles III were released earlier this year.
