Rare Snowman 50p coin sells for almost £300 on eBay – but do you have one in your spare change?
A RARE 50p coin featuring treasured Christmas character The Snowman is selling for up to £290 on eBay.
The silver coins were launched on the Isle of Man back in 2003 and only 10,000 were ever minted, according to coin collecting website Change Checker.
It was released as a limited-edition coin to mark the 25th anniversary of the release of the much-loved classic The Snowman by children’s author and illustrator Raymond Briggs.
The highest price the festive coin has fetched after 29 people bid for it at the end of October.
And it rarely sells for less than £200 when one of the rare coins makes its way onto the auction website.
The 50p coin – which is technically only worth its face value of 50p – was produced by the Pobjoy Mint in Surrey, which used to make all of the Isle of Man’s coins and banknotes until last year.
As a Crown Dependency, the island issues its own notes and coins – but that means that the coin’s chances of turning up in change on the mainland are very slim.
A spokesman from Change Checker said: “Although not many of these coins are available on the secondary market, if you did want to add one to your collection, you’d be looking at parting with a minimum of £200.”
The coin was re-released in 2008 with the same design but it never entered general circulation.
Three new Snowman 50p coin were released by the Royal Mint this week and two of them sold out in just a few hours.
One of them – a silver proof coin worth £60 with a design entirely in colour – is already .
They won’t enter general circulation though so there’s little chance of one of these valuable coins ending up in your spare change, sadly.
The Snowman coins aren’t the only valuable 50ps around.
In the past, we’ve revealed the most valuable sought after coins after one seller pocketed £5,000 from flogging his Battle of Hastings 50p.
The most popular 50p is one with a Kew Gardens design – it is worth up to £160 on eBay.
Other rare 50p coins usually achieve a premium of around 10 to 12 times face value, or about £5 to £6, when they are sold on.
Depending on the design, some are worth up to £810 so it’s worth looking at the shrapnel in your wallet and seeing if you have one of these sought after coins.
The top 5 rarest 50p coins and how much they are worth
THE value of a coin varies depending on how sought after it is by collectors.
Rare coins – those with low mintage numbers – are often the most valuable but that’s not always the case. We take a look at the top five rarest coins () and see how much they are selling for on eBay at the moment.
- 2009 Kew Gardens (210,000 minted)
- 2017 Sir Isaac Newton (1.8million minted)
- 2016 Jemima Puddle-Duck (2.1million minted)
- 2003 Suffragettes (3.1million minted)
- 2011 WWF (3.4million minted)
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