This cheeky eBay seller has hand-drawn a new £5 note… and bids for it have reached £10,000
The cheeky seller tried to cash in on the 'rare misprint' with bids reaching five figures until eBay took the listing down
THERE'S no stopping cheeky eBay sellers who'll attempt to flog anything online in exchange for some cash.
With all the buzz over the newly-released £5 notes, one seller took the mickey and offered up for sale a "rare misprint on white paper and graphite ink" - or a version of the fiver that he'd DRAWN HIMSELF.
Adam Purcell, from Bournemouth, noticed that bids on other five pound notes had risen to five figures and decided to take his chances.
Using a blunt pencil and scrap of paper, the 24-year-old scrawled out his own version of the new note, complete with decorative writing and a rather alarming portrait of the Queen.
Despite posting the item on eBay as a joke, to Adam's disbelief bids soon reached more than £10,000 - but the listing was then removed by the site.
He told : "I was surprised it got as high as it did before it was taken down. I've seen a lot of articles about people flogging five pound notes for a ridiculous amount of money, so I thought I'd have a laugh with it using my incredible artistic talents. I wasn't sure it would get any bids at all."
Adam described his fake fiver as an object that would "surpass all monetary value" and might even be worthy of displaying in the National Gallery in London.
It took him just five minutes to draw, so he wasn't surprised when one bidder messaged him to say it looks like a child's drawing.
He added: "I got a fair few messages off people saying they thought it was hilarious and one woman thought it was a child who had drawn it.
"I replied that that was unlikely, and it was probably 'bring your dog to work day' when the Bank of England designed the note and they gave their pet a go."
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Just 15 bids took the total to £10,100, though Adam was secretly grateful when his listing was taken down.
He said: "To be honest, they probably did me a favour as I would have been left with a final value fee of £1,200-odd. I've now framed the note and it's proudly hanging in the living room."
Adam's not the only one to try and flog a hand-drawn version of the new note, as several others are also currently up for sale, with starting prices of £100 and £200... though nobody's bid yet.
Others have been far more lucky though, with their genuine misprinted fivers fetching thousands online.
One freshly minted fiver with the coveted AK47 serial number fetched a whopping £80,100 on eBay.
Meanwhile a grandmother told how she was hoping to fund her family's dream Christmas after flogging her new plastic £5 note for £1,699.
And one dad revealed he had cashed in on more than £1,000 with the new notes.
Is your new plastic £5 note worth thousands?
The new plastic fivers fetching the highest prices are the ones that contain serial numbers beginning with 'AA01'.
This means they were produced in the first batch of new five pound notes.
These four digits are then followed by six more numbers.
The smaller the number in this six-digit figure, the earlier it was printed in the batch.
The earlier it was printed, the more valuable the note is.
Serial numbers are printed down the left hand side of the banknote and it also appears in the bottom right, below the clear window.
The first note – featuring the serial number AA01 000001 – was presented to The Queen which means there are up to 999,998 other fivers with the AA01 prefix.