Posts Tagged ‘banknotes’
Could your King Charles III Banknote be worth £17,000?
Whenever new banknotes are issued, it causes quite a stir in the collecting community, with serious collectors rushing to secure the notes with the lowest serial numbers.
The Bank of England generally hold back some of the notes with the earliest serial numbers, donating them to the monarch, people or institutions that were involved in the development of the note, but others can fetch hefty sums at auction!
Notes under the hammer
Spink & Sons recently held four auctions for each denomination of the new King Charles III banknotes to raise funds for charity, and a whopping £914,127 was raised overall!
The proceeds from the auctions will be shared between 10 charities that have been chosen by the Bank of England:
- Childhood Trust
- The Trussell Trust
- Shout
- Carers UK
- Demelza
- WWF-UK
- The Brain Tumour Charity
- London’s Air Ambulance Charity
- Child Bereavement UK
- The Samaritans
At the auction for the King Charles III £10 banknotes, a single £10 note with the serial number HB01 000002 sold for an astonishing £17,000!
The £50 banknote auction even broke the record for the highest lot sold in a Bank of England banknote auction. A sheet of 40 £50 banknotes sold for £26,000 – 13 times their face value!
Which serial numbers should you be looking out for?
Whilst the very first banknotes aren’t released into general circulation, there are other serial numbers that are also considered collectable.
JMW Turner £20 Notes
As the polymer £20 note featured JMW Turner on the reverse, some serial numbers matching key dates relating to the painter became highly collectible. For example, 23 041775 represents Turner’s date of birth, whilst 19 121851 relates to his death and 17 751851 would be his birth and death combined.
Image Credit: Bank of England
True Turner fans might also look for 18 381839 representing the date he painted ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ (which featured on the new £20 note) and the date the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy respectively.
Alan Turing £50 Notes
The £50 note features famous scientist and mathematician, Alan Turing, and similarly to the £20 note, certain serial numbers matching key dates relating to Alan Turing became collectable.
Image Credit: Bank of England
Serial numbers such as 23 061912 (which represents Turing’s date of birth), 07 061954 (which relates to his death) and 09 071941 (which represents the date that the enigma code was cracked by Turing and his team at Bletchley Park during WW2) are all ones to look out for. .
Others include AK47, due to the machine gun connotations, and 007 which could be desirable to James Bond fans.
The hunt is on!
With this news that King Charles III banknotes have recently sold for much more than face value, the hunt is on to find others with interesting or collectable serial numbers.
If you’ve come across any King Charles III banknotes, let us know in the comments where you found it and whether it’s got an interesting or rare serial number!
Safely store your banknote collection
If you do have any King Charles III banknotes in your collection that you don’t fancy parting with, you can securely store them in the Change Checker Complete Polymer Banknote Collecting Pack, which now includes spaces for King Charles III banknotes!
The eBay Tracker gets a shake up! June 2024 update
If you have any of the below coins or banknotes in your collection, read on to find out how much they could be worth in our latest eBay Tracker and Valuation Index update!
Since January 2017, our eBay Tracker has monitored the secondary market prices of 10 of the top UK coins and banknotes. However, due to demand for rare and sought after coins changing over the years, and the introduction of the new King Charles III banknotes, we’ve updated the coins and banknotes on our tracker to give you the most relevant data on the top UK coins and banknotes right now.
You might notice that your favourite coin or banknote that we usually track is missing, but you can always check out our previous eBay Tracker updates to see how their value has changed over time.
eBay Tracker
Of course, we’ll still be tracking the secondary market selling price of the rarest 50p and £2 in circulation – the 2009 Kew Gardens 50p and the 2002 Northern Ireland Commonwealth Games £2, as their extremely low mintage figures make them some of the hardest coins to find in your change.
We’ll also keep monitoring the undated 20p, the 92/93 EEC 50p, the 2018 Sir Isaac Newton 50p and the rarest Olympic coin – the Football 50p.
Kew Gardens 50p
In 2014, 5 years after its release, The Royal Mint revealed that only 210,000 Kew Gardens 50p coins had been struck for circulation, making it the scarcest UK coin in circulation. And 10 years later, people are still willing to pay hefty sums to get their hands on one, in fact it’s the only coin on our tracker to have increased in price in the last 6 months.
The average secondary market value for a Kew Gardens 50p is currently around £145, which is just £7 more than our last update.
Undated 20p
The undated 20p is often thought of as the ‘holy grail of change collecting’, as it’s not been confirmed just how many of these error coins made it into circulation. As one of the most sought-after coins, it’s at the top of many collectors’ wish lists, and some are willing to pay up to £50 to get their hands on one!
Although that’s 22% decrease since our last eBay Tracker update, it’s still a whopping 250 times the coin’s face value!
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 50p
The very first UK coin to feature King Charles III on the obverse after the passing of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022 paid tribute to Her Majesty’s life and record breaking reign. As only the second ever royal UK 50p AND the first UK coin to feature the new monarch, collectors were keen to get their hands on the 2022 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 50p.
Those who weren’t able to find one in their change straight away took to the secondary market and, back in January 2023 when it first appeared on our eBay Tracker, were willing to pay up to five times its face value! Since then, however, the median secondary market selling price has slowly decreased, as more and more are being found ‘in the wild’ and since The Royal Mint announced that there are 9.6 million of them in circulation – more than the amount of definitive Royal Shield 50ps that entered circulation the same year.
New additions to the eBay Tracker
As of June 2024, we’ll start tracking the median secondary market selling price of some other rare coins in circulation as well as some newer coins and banknotes that are proving hard for collectors to find.
Salmon 50p
The first coin to enter circulation from the New UK Coinage set featuring King Charles III was the Atlantic Salmon 50p. In November 2023, an estimated 500,000 Salmon 50ps entered circulation, but The Royal Mint are yet to announce the definitive mintage figure.
Collectors haven’t been having much luck finding them in their change and due to this, they’ve been selling for a pretty penny on the secondary market, fetching up to £14.50!
Have you found an Atlantic Salmon 50p in your change? Let us know where you found one!
W (World Wide Web) 10p
The A-Z of Great Britain 10p series was first issued in 2018, with a 10p representing something quintessentially British for each letter of the alphabet. A second wave of these 10ps was issued in 2019, and out of all of them, the 2019 W for World Wide Web 10p has the lowest mintage figure of just 63,000 – even lower than the Kew Gardens 50p!
According to our eBay Tracker, you can expect to pay up to £4.50 for a W 10p on the secondary market, not a bad return on a 10p coin!
The first ever King Charles III Banknotes
The first ever King Charles III banknotes entered circulation on 5th June 2024, however they were only available at a select few locations. As these new notes will only be issued to replace worn or damaged Queen Elizabeth II going forward, they’ve inevitably become extremely sought after by collectors.
A King Charles III £5 banknote will cost you up to £25 on the secondary market, whilst a £10 note featuring His Majesty will set you back £21.
Valuation Index
Using the total price of the coins and banknotes tracked, the Valuation Index follows the rise and fall of their overall value, measured in points against the baseline set at January 2017.
Since the last update in January 2024, there’s been a 5% decrease in the overall value of the Top 12 coins and banknotes on the eBay Tracker, but bear in mind that the coins and banknotes tracked have been updated, as represented by the vertical dotted line on the graph.
eBay Tracker FAQs
How does the eBay Tracker work?
The Change Checker eBay Tracker takes the last 9 sold prices on eBay and gives the median price achieved. By taking the median, rather than an average, we avoid skewing figures with excessively high or low prices.
Please note that the Change Checker eBay Tracker is only ever designed to be a guide as to prices achieved on eBay. Prices may vary depending on collector demand and the quality of the coin being sold. It does not provide any guarantee as to future values of coins.
My coin isn’t on the eBay Tracker
The eBay Tracker follows the movements of the top UK coins and banknotes, however if your coin doesn’t appear on the tracker you can use our 6 point guide to help determine the realistic value for your coin.
Find out more about your coins
If you’re interested in coin collecting, our Change Checker web app is completely free to use!
Here’s where you can find the new King Charles III Banknotes…
The new King Charles III Banknotes entered circulation on 5th June 2024, and collectors have been rushing to secure the ones with the lowest serial number. The branch manager at Sunderland City Post Office even said people were queueing waiting for their doors to open on 5th June to get their hands on the new notes.
Only a select few places are stocking the King Charles III banknotes, so far so here’s where you can get your hands on them…
Post Offices
- Sunderland City, SR1, 1RR
- The City of London, EC2M 5TE
- Moorgate, EC2M 5TE
- Broadway, SW1H 0AX
- Houndsditch, E1 7BS
- Piccadilly Plaza in Manchester, M2 1BB
- Portsmouth, PO1 1AB
- Birmingham, B2 4AA
- Great Massingham, PE31 6HP
- Tetbury, GL8 8DB
- Minchinhampton, GL6 9BN
- Windsor, SL4 1AA
- Woodstock, OX20 1SP
- Poundbury, DT1 3AZ
The Bank of England Counter
- Threadneedle Street, London, EC2R 8AH – The counter will be issuing new King Charles III banknotes from 5th June to 11th June 2024 with a limit of £300 per customer.
Bank of England Postal Exchange Service
- You can obtain King Charles III banknotes using the Bank of England’s postal exchange service from 5th June to 30th June 2024 with a limit of £300 per customer.
Apply for postal exchange service here >>
If you’ve managed to get your hands on a King Charles III banknote, let us know where in the comments!
A closer look at the first ever King Charles III Banknotes
Find out everything you need to know about the new banknotes and their special security features by reading our blog >>
