Which Alan Turing £50 notes should you be looking out for?

On the day that would have been Alan Turing’s 109th birthday, The Bank of England have just issued their final banknote in the polymer series, celebrating the famous scientist and mathematician.

The Alan Turing £50 Polymer Banknote

The brand new £50 note is full of exciting design and security features, including:

  • photo of Turing from 1951 which is part of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection,
  • A design of Turing’s trial model of his famous Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) Pilot Machine,
  • Technical drawings for the British Bombe,
  • Ticker tape depicting Alan Turing’s birth date (23 June 1912) in binary code, and
  • A large see-through window depicting a metallic microchip image with clovers around the outside in dedication to Bletchley Park, where Turing conducted most of his work in WW2.

You can find out more of the exciting features on the UK’s first-ever polymer £50 note here >>

Or, you can watch our video below!


Keen collectors will be eager to hunt down the most sought-after serial numbers for the new note.

When the UK’s first polymer £5 note was released in September 2016, serial numbers became the talk of a nation and stories of early serial numbers selling for thousands of pounds were commonplace.

In fact, an “AK37 007 James Bond Bank of England Polymer £5 note” even sold for £5,000 on eBay – 1,000 times its face value!

A ‘James ‘Bond’ £5 note sold for £5,000 on eBay

But as this brand new £50 enters circulation, which serial numbers should you be looking to get your hands on?

AA01 – the first notes to be printed

AA01 are the first serial numbers to be printed and always prove popular with collectors.

Our eBay Tracker follows the prices of the UK’s Top Coins and Banknotes, including the AA01 polymer £5 and £10 notes, which are currently selling for £10 and £15 respectively. However when the notes were first released we saw a collecting frenzy, with people paying (and demanding) vastly inflated prices for low serial number notes.

Prefixes on the £5 notes started at AA and there are 60 notes on a sheet, AA01- AA60. For each of these cyphers there are 999,000 serial numbers printed: 000001 to 999000. Therefore for the first AA cypher there’s an incredible 59,940,000 notes!

Whilst the £50 note is larger than the £5, meaning less notes will be printed per sheet, there are still A LOT of combinations for AA cyphers on the new £50 – so make sure you keep your eyes out for them!

However, The Bank of England will always hold back some of the notes with the earliest serial numbers, donating them to people or institutions that were involved in the development of the note or who traditionally receive a note when a new series is issued.

For example, Bletchley Post Office was one of the first places to have the new £50 note today, in recognition of the the work done by Mr. Turing and his team at Bletchley Park.

Key dates to look out for

It’s always worth looking out for certain serial numbers matching key dates relating Alan Turing that could become collectable.

For example, 23 061912 represents Turing’s date of birth, whilst 07 061954 relates to his death and 19 121954 would be his birth and death combined.

Alan Turing Aged 16 – Credit: TuringArchive.org

True Turing fans might also look for 09 071941 representing the date that the enigma code was cracked by Turing and his team at Bletchley Park during WW2.

Novelty numbers and Consecutive notes

There may well also be a rush to find the AK47 serial numbers again and James Bond 007 will likely be popular once more.

Consecutively numbered notes are always interesting to collectors too – one man sold three consecutive AA01 notes for £456!

Q&A

Can you request specific serial numbered notes from the bank?

Sadly not. For the launch of the new £5 note 440 million banknotes were printed and these were printed in very large batches.

To print enough banknotes to service the country’s 48,000 ATMs for example, it’s just not possible for the bank to separate certain serial numbers.

How much should I pay for a new £50 note?

The simple answer is, it’s completely up to you. An early serial numbered £50 note will be a genuine piece of the country’s history. It’s likely The Bank of England will hold an auction of early editions, so if you have the disposable income, why not?!

Will the old paper £50 note still be legal tender?

You will still be able to use the paper £50 note until The Bank of England withdraw it from circulation on 30th September 2022.

Many banks will accept withdrawn notes as deposits from customers. The Post Office may also accept withdrawn notes as a deposit into any bank account you can access at the Post Office. And, you can always exchange withdrawn notes with The Bank of England directly.

Where will I be able to find the new polymer £50 note?

Whilst not all cash points will offer the option to withdraw a £50 note, most banks should be able to provide you with one. It’s worth ringing your local bank in advance to check they have the new note before setting out to collect it.


Will you be looking out for any particular serial numbers? Let us know in the comments below!


Store, Protect, and Present YOUR Polymer Notes with the Polymer Banknote Collecting Pack!

The Change Checker Polymer Banknote Collecting Pack has space to securely house all four of England’s polymer banknotes, including:

  • 2016 Sir Winston Churchill £5 Polymer Banknote
  • 2017 Jane Austen £10 Polymer Banknote
  • 2020 JMW Turner £20 Polymer Banknote
  • 2021 Alan Turing £50 Polymer Banknote

Within your collecting pack we’ve also included ID cards for each note, an information page about the new banknotes, and a Change Checker album.

With the release of the final £50 polymer banknote in 2021 and the completion of the Bank of England’s polymer banknote update, now really is the perfect time to start collecting!

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Alan Turing – The Face of the £50 Note!

In 2019, The Bank of England revealed Alan Turing as the new face of the £50 banknote.

In their search to find an eminent British scientist to feature on the £50 note, a total of 227,299 nominations were sent to The Bank of England. 989 eligible characters were narrowed down to a shortlist of just 12 before Turing was finally selected.

Change Checker is so excited to reveal that today the design of this BRAND NEW £50 note has been officially confirmed by The Bank of England.

Source: Bank of England.

In keeping with Turing’s code-breaking legacy, this brand new £50 has been declared as the most secure yet.

What features on the new £50 note?

UK £50 Banknote. Source: The Bank of England.

This brand new banknote is FULL of exciting features. Including:

  • A photo of Turing from 1951 which is part of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection
  • A table and mathematical formulae from Turing’s 1936 paper “On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem”
  • A design of Turing’s trial model of his famous Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) Pilot Machine
  • Technical drawings for the British Bombe, one of the primary tools used to break Enigma-enciphered messages
  • A quote from Turing, from an interview in The Times newspaper (June 1949): “This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be”
  • His signature from the visitor’s book at Max Newman’s House in 1947 which is on display at Bletchley Park
  • Ticker tape depicting Alan Turing’s birth date (23 June 1912) in binary code.

In addition to these amazing design features, there are of course a series of security features, similar to those we’ve seen on our £5, £10, and £20 polymer notes, including holograms and see-through windows.

GCHQ Collaboration

 In recognition of Turing’s code-breaking expertise, the Bank of England have collaborated with GCHQ on the intelligence and cyber agency’s toughest puzzle ever – based on the Turing £50 bank note design.

GCHQ’s Turing Challenge is a set of 12 puzzles that have been put together by intelligence staff at GCHQ, where problem solving and a diverse mix of minds are at the heart of its work to help protect the UK from increasingly complex threats

Who was Alan Turing and why is he being featured on a £50 note?

Alan Turing Aged 16 – Credit: TuringArchive.org

Alan Turing was most famously known for accelerating Allied efforts to read German Naval messages enciphered with the Enigma machine.

His work is said to have been key to shortening World War Two and saving millions of lives.

In addition to his work during World War Two, Turing played a pivotal role in the development of early computers, first at the National Physical Laboratory and later at the University of Manchester.

In 2013, he was given a posthumous royal pardon for his 1952 conviction for gross indecency. 

Speaking of the new note, Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, said: “Turing was a leading mathematician, developmental biologist, and a pioneer in the field of computer science. By placing him on our new polymer £50 banknote, we are celebrating his achievements, and the values he symbolises.”

Polymer Notes

This brand new £50 note is the last in the Bank of England’s collection to switch from paper to polymer, following the popularity of the polymer £20, £10 and £5 notes.

The banknote will enter circulation on 23 June, which would have been the mathematician’s birthday.

Alan Turing £50 note voted as Change Checker’s favourite polymer note!

As the brand new £50 note is the last in the Bank of England’s collection to switch from paper to polymer, we asked you to vote for your favourite polymer note.

The results are in!

The Alan Turing £50 has been revealed as Change Checkers’ favourite polymer banknote, taking over 40% of the votes!

We’re certain collectors will be eager to add this banknote to their collections when it’s released later in the year. Will you? Let us know in the comments below!


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Face-less Value! Do you have this £10 note error worth thousands of pounds?

The UK’s new polymer £10 note, featuring Jane Austen, entered circulation on 14th September 2017, replacing the previously-used paper notes.

After its release, collectors were eager to hunt down the notes with the lowest serial numbers but it’s recently been revealed that there is a particular error that we should be looking out for – one that’s worth thousands!

Faceless £10 Note

One lucky collector was very surprised to see Her Majesty’s portrait missing some very key features on the £10 note that he withdrew from a cash machine.

Face-less £1- Banknote. Source: The Sun UK

The gentleman was almost about to spend the note before a shop assistant pointed it out to him! Speaking of the unusual banknote, Mr. Coleman said he was considering auctioning it.

Whilst we’d love for this to be a genuine error, we’ll have to wait for official confirmation from the Bank of England!

Sought-after Banknotes

Collecting banknotes is a serious hobby that many thousands of people all over the world enjoy. Whenever a new banknote is issued, or an error story arises, collectors are eager to add them to their collection.

With so many stories in the press and listings on eBay claiming certain notes were worth way over face value, it’s easy to see how the nation got swept away with the idea of their new polymer banknote being worth thousands of pounds.

Whilst there’s a range of serial numbers that could fetch you a pretty penny on the secondary market, we’ve never seen an error quite like the Faceless £10 Note. If this is classified as genuine, it would certainly increase collector demand!

Do you have this error note sitting in your collection?

If you think you’ve got a banknote with Her Majesty’s portrait missing its features, we’d love to hear from you! You can get in touch via [email protected] or via any of our social channels:

Don’t miss out on the very latest UK coin releases!

Join the Change Checker UK CERTIFIED BU Subscription Service and receive new UK coins sent to your door without the hassle of placing orders on the day of release!

Simply choose the perfect subscription for you here >>