Rare error £2 coin sells for £255 on eBay – could the mistake be lurking in your change?

A RARE £2 coin has sold for almost 130 times its face value on eBay, and it’s all down to a major design fault.

The error £2 is all one colour – but £2 coins shouldn’t look like that as they are usually silver in the middle and gold on the outside rim.

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This coin, however, is gold all-over.

That mistake meant bidders were willing to fork out as much as £255 for the coin though, as they battled it out on the online auction site last month.

Between them, five bidders placed 28 bids on the rare coin, each hoping to claim the copy for their own.

Bidding kicked off at £20, which was already a rate 10 times the coin’s face value.

But it managed to rocket by a whopping £235 more in the space of just seven days.

The Royal Mint manufactures between three million and four million coins a day, so often things will go wrong – and there’s a great possibility that your own change you be worth its own pretty penny.

The original seller of this coin claimed they had found this copy lurking in their own change, so it’s always worth a look as you could be quids-in.

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Could one be lurking in your change?

Error coins are still legal tender, so while they may look a little odd there’s still a high chance they could turn up in your change.

And even the simplest mistakes could be worth a mint – so keep an eye out.

Often, £2 coins will crop up looking a bit like runny fried eggs.

Collectors are super keen to get their hands on the quirky fault though and they can pay hundreds of pounds for a copy of their own.

The error is not meant to be there, of course, so that means coins like it won’t have been made in high volumes.

But that’s what gets collectors interested – the harder a coin is to find, then the more profit you may stand to make.

Only one rare error Army £2 coin with a misprinted phrase has been spotted for example, yet experts say it could be worth £100.

It’s the same with limited edition designs that The Royal Mint officially releases with low mintage figures – like the Kew Gardens 50p or anything from the Beatrix Potter collection or the Olympic range.

Because less are circulating, they are deemed more scarce and valuable by collectors.

But experts warn that a number of fake coins often end up in circulation, so you have to be careful when you’re bidding online.

Change experts like Coin Hunter will help you verify if your rare finds are real, and they can help place a value on coins you come across.

You can scroll through other eBay listings to get a general idea of how much collectors are willing to pay too.

And usually you can determine if something is the real deal by the number of bidders who were willing to stake their claim on it.

We’ve often seen bidding wars break out on the most highly sought-after copies.

But keep in mind that a buyer can always pull out of the sale, which means it won’t have sold for the price that it may say it has.

This post first appeared on thesun.co.uk