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The Most Valuable £1 Coins Have Been Revealed

The Most Valuable £1 Coins Have Been Revealed

You could be sitting on a small fortune.

James Dawson

James Dawson

There is just five weeks to go until the new 12-sided £1 coin is launched. But it turns out that if you've got a full collection of the current coins, then selling it online could make you a pretty penny.

There are currently 24 different £1 coin designs in circulation and money savvy collectors are rushing to complete the full set.

The £1 coin has been in circulation since 1983. During that time a total of 2.2 billion £1 have been struck for circulation. But they are not all still in use.

Credit: PA Images

The last available figures for coins in circulation, published by The Royal Mint for 2014, suggest that 1,553,000,000 £1 coins are in circulation.

There are various different types of coin, here they all are...

Credit: Changechecker.org

Now Changechecker.org has produced, scaled from 100 to 1, the scores represent the relative scarcity of each coin, with 100 being the most scarce.

And the numbers in the chart match up with the coins featured above. Take a look here...

Credit: Changechecker.org

The rarest is the Edinburgh City coin, of which it is estimated there are somewhere between 600,000 - 800,000 still in circulation.

On average, it means that you will have to examine roughly 3,000 mixed £1 coins to find the Edinburgh City £1 Coin. The coin is selling for as much as £34, over 3000% of its value.

While the 2011 Cardiff City £1 coin has sold for £20 and the London City 2010 coin is selling for £10.

Credit: Royal Mint

These aren't the only coins worth more than face value, turns out it could be worth smashing open you piggy banks for some 50ps too...

London 2012 Olympics 50p

Remember when London held the Olympics? You couldn't move for memorabilia with LONDON 2012 splashed all over it. As soon as it was over, it was all being sold for less than a quid down at Home Bargains and B&M. You want a set of coasters that are completely irrelevant? LOOK NO FURTHER.

Well, for those of you who collected Olympics stuff - you're the ones who are laughing now. This particular coin (of which 600 were only ever made) is fetching up to £3,000 on eBay. Think you've got it, you probably haven't, as there's only 600 of these made, with the water over the aquatic swimmer's face. Yep, you've checked again. You don't have it, do you?

The 'Offside Rule' 50p

Annoyingly, I've seen this coin before. Many times. I remember studying it aggressively when I was pissed. If I'd have kept it, I'd been quids in as they're currently going for a tenner. Ey, don't look down your nose though. That's still 20 times its original value.

WWF 50p

This cool coin was released in 2011 and, understandably, is very popular among collectors. Coin checker spoke to Metro, stating: "One coin which has seemed to unite favourable public opinion is the WWF 50p issued in 2011.

"The design by Matthew Dent features 50 individual icons which represent the various facets of the WWF with the famous panda at the heart of it."

They're going for over £200 at the moment.

Kew Gardens 50p

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of London's Kew Gardens, in the borough of Richmond Upon Thames, the Royal Mint released 210,000 of these 50p coins. They're believed to be worth £50. However, the Sun reports that there are several on eBay going for more than that.

The EC Commemorative 50p

109,000 of these were made the commemorate the British presidency of the council of Europe. Yeah. I have no idea what that means either. But they're worth £20 a pop so all good.


Credit: Royal Mint

So there you have it. A nice little earner for doing absolutely balls all. Not bad.

Featured image credit: Royal Mint

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