Recently, certain coins that look pretty ordinary have ended up selling for thousands of pounds on online marketplaces. One lucky Glaswegian reportedly bagged £10,000 after selling a 'rare' Brexit coin on eBay in February.
And another seller received £1,500 for another 50p coin featuring Paddington Bear. Because of this, a lot of people are eager to know how they can tell if any coin in their collection is worth a fortune or not.
And if they do turn out to be rare, what's the best way of selling them and receiving the cash? To help people out, our sister title Glasgow Live spoke to coin expert Rachel Hooper, who is the project group manager for Change Checker, an online tool for finding and swapping rare coins.
Why you should get your coins verified by the Royal Mint
Rachel, who has worked in the coin industry for five years and specialises in UK new issue coins, says that there are a lot of different factors in place when it comes to valuing a coin. She said: "You have a number of ways you can look out for rare coins and ways to spot why your coin would be worth a certain amount.
"We would always advise that if you had a coin in your collection you were trying to sell and another collector has been trying to track that down for a really long time, of course that collector would potentially be willing to pay above the odds to get hold of it to complete their collection. If another collector did have that coin already or didn't hold it to such value, you would perhaps struggle to get as much or that coin."
And ahead of selling, it's advised that you get it verified beforehand, with Rachel explaining: "If you do think you've come across a rare coin, you probably want to get that verified by the Royal Mint because you're always likely to be able to get a better price for your coin if you have that certificate of authenticity that would explain what the error is."
She added that "it would be a real collectors piece if you could say 'I found this coin, the Royal Mint have verified it therefore it's genuine'. After that, you can look at selling it from there."
How to sell your rare coins
Speaking about the best places to sell any rare coins, Rachel said: "eBay is definitely good shout. You have to pay seller fees with and there's no guarantee that the sale will go through but if you do decide to sell on eBay, look through previous sold prices for similar coins to get a better understanding of what you would expect to achieve for selling that coin.
"You can also look at Facebook coin groups as you tend to get more serious collectors and it's also really great place to get advice as well if you are looking for more information on coins. There's also the British Numismatic Trade Association and they have listed of dealers on there.
"So if you have lot of coins, perhaps you didn't want to have to go through each individual one, you could talk to one of the dealers they'll be able to get a price together for you or just advise you on the best places to sell that. So it's always a good idea if you did have a bigger bulk number of coins to sell, go and talk to a dealer there and they can give you some advice."
When it comes to selling them, Change Checker has created an eBay tracker to help people know how much certain coins have been selling for.
Rachel explains: "Part of our six-point guide is to check our eBay tracker. This looks back at the median sold prices overs of the top ten coins and banknotes that you can find out there and it gives you information on its current market value. We look at trends and patterns so you can see an overall pattern for how desirable coins are at the moment and how much people could be willing to pay above the odds for them.
How to identify a rare coin
If you don't know what to look for, it can be hard to know if any of your coins could be worth selling. Speaking about their six-point guide, Rachel has said it's worth checking it out - because "there is nothing more exciting when you find a different coin in your change and you want to figure out how much it's worth and whether it's a collectible."
The Scarcity index is also a useful tool to find out how sought after your coin is. Change Checker use their "own data from our swap centre, looking at how often coins are swapped, how often they are listed as well as mintage figures for the circulating coins and that determines how sought after each coin in circulation is."
Rachel continued: "You'll notice the Kew Gardens 50p always seems to be at the top of that index and it's really the holy grail I guess of change collecting. It's certainly pretty hard to come by and there's only 210,000 of them out there which is really, really low especially when you consider where the next rarest 50p in circulation is the Beatrix Potter one which is 1.4million. The Olympic ones are rare too.
"So it's a really big jump up from 210,000 to 1.4 million but it also means that it's really tricky to come by and especially when you consider a lot of collectors, if they found it, they've been keeping hold of that. It's currently selling on the second market for well over face value, sometimes you see listed for upwards of around £200."
Which coins to look out for
Rachel has said that any of the Olympic 50p coins are popular with collectors, explaining it was the coin that "kickstarted the craze and the nation's love of collecting. Those were celebrating the London Olympics and the mintage figure of each of those are really quite low, they're sort of around the 1.1 million to two million mark which although it sounds like a lot, when you consider the population of the UK, it's actually a really small number.
"The Beatrix Potter are actually a lot rarer than first considered so they're definitely ones to look out for. Not only are they rare because of the mintage figure but because of the collecting theme around Beatrix Potter. They've almost inspired a new generation of collectors to come and join the hobby because of the Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit theme. They're synonymous with children's literature and it's been a way in for the younger generation to get excited about coin collecting."
Rachel also said it's worth checking your 20ps, because although they may not have the same commemorative designs as 50ps, some of them can have faults making them worth more.
She explained: "The 20 pences that were released in 2008 are ones to keep an eye out for. When there was a changeover of design, the coins got overlooked I think in the design process and some coins were accidentally struck without a date on them because where the date had originally been on one side of the design, then changed to another.
"One of the dies for striking the coins wasn't changed over and it meant that no date was stamped onto the coin, but only a few of them were actually stamped before the mistake was realised."
Why you should start collecting King Charles III coins
Thanks to the new monarch, now is the ideal time to start looking out for certain coins. Rachel said: "I think at the moment I would always be talking to collectors about the fact we have the new monarch changeovers.
"We've got the new King Charles the third 50p's which entered circulation in December and although quite a large number eventually will enter circulation around the nine million mark, the fact that this is a Numismatic first I think it's going to be incredibly sought after - particularly in years to come so now is the time to start your King Charles collection.
"Make sure you've got the very first one and then be looking out for the others and build up a complete collection as you go."
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