A RARE 50p coin featuring a picture of Kew Gardens has been sold on eBay for £255.
They are one of the most sought after coins, according to the Royal Mint, and go for hundreds of times their face value.
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The 50p coin features the Chinese Pagoda at the famous London landmark and is one of the rarest coins out there because there’s so few of them.
Only 210,000 of them were released into circulation in 2009.
That’s far fewer than most coins – for example, there were nearly half a billion of the 1997 Britannia 50p put into circulation.
The coin is not only rare, but scarce too – which can help push the value of a coin up even more.
Is your small change worth a fortune?
IF you think that you might have a rare coin then you might be able to make a real mint.
The most valuable coins are usually those with a low mintage or an error.
These are often deemed the most valuable by collectors.
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.
You can either choose to sell the coin on eBay or through a specialist such as ChangeChecker.org.
If you choose the auction website then remember to set a minimum price that is higher or at the very least equal to the face value of the coin.
Even if your coin “sells” on eBay for a high price there’s no guarantee that the buyer will cough up.
It its terms and conditions, the auction website states that bidders enter a “legally binding contract to purchase an item”, but there’s no way to enforce this rule in reality.
The most eBay can do is add a note to their account for the unpaid item or remove their ability to bid and buy.
Scarcity takes into account how in demand a coin is – and because the Kew Gardens coin is a firm favourite amongst collectors, it’s deemed to be scarce.
In fact, it’s so sought after that it has topped the charts of Changechecker.org’s scarcity index for the past few years.
But it’s previously gone for much more than £255.
The Sun has spotted it being sold for £707 on eBay in February.
But it is still one of the highest sums it’s been flogged for.
We’ve seen it sell on eBay for £250, for £203, £186 and £150.
If you think you have one, make sure you check the date of the coin.
The rare Kew Gardens 50p is not to be confused with the same coin which was reissued in 2019.
Although it features the same design, many more were made and they are not worth as much.
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.
The rare Kew Gardens 50p not the only rare coin that has been sold for hundreds recently.
A rare coin featuring a picture of the Olympics drawn by a young Blue Peter viewer was sold for £205 earlier this week.
The Blue Peter Olympic coin shows an athlete doing the high jump and was drawn by nine-year-old Florence Jackson after winning a competition on the kids TV show.
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There are also many rare 2p coins – do you have one worth up to £600 in your pocket?
Here are the five rarest 50p coins worth up to £707 revealed – and it includes the popular Kew Gardens coin.
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