New fivers sell for hundreds of pounds – is your Churchill £5 worth a fortune?

NEW £5 notes are selling for over SIXTY times their face value on auction site eBay.

Collectors are splashing out £300 a time on some of the first bills to leave the presses.

You could be quids in if you have one with a serial number starting AA01, followed by a six-digit number.

The serial number can be found on the reverse side of the note, which features a portrait of Sir Winston Churchill. It is printed down the left hand side and also appears in the bottom right below the clear window.

The first note - with a AA01 000001 number was presented to The Queen leaving up to 999,998 other fivers with the AA01 prefix.

Auction sites have seen a spike in sales of the note since its release last week - with prices up to £300.

A note with one of the sought after serial numbers had reached £310 on eBay earlier this afternoon, with many others listed.

The polymer fivers are 15 per cent smaller than the paper notes they are replacing and are said to last more than twice as long.

The plastic notes are difficult to tear and can survive being put through the washing machine and other spills.

Britain is joining the list of more than 30 countries that already use plastic banknotes, including Australia which adopted the notes in 1988, and Singapore and New Zealand.

According to G4S Cash Solutions, one of the distributors, it could take until the end of next week before all the cash machines that dispense fivers are stocked with new notes.

On October 3, the Bank of England will also be auctioning off a batch of low serial number £5 notes for charity.

The lowest, with serial number AA01 000017, has an estimate of between £800 and £1,200. Auctioneers Spink says this is almost certainly the lowest number Bank of England polymer £5 available to the public.

A sheet of 60 notes with serial numbers starting AM01-AM60 has an estimate at the auction of between £3,000 and £4,000.

The Bank of England has donated some notes with significant or low serial numbers to people and institutions who were involved in the development, or traditionally receive one when a new series is issued.

The new £5 note paves the way for a new generation of security features, making the note harder to counterfeit, the Bank of England claims.

They include a see-through window featuring the Queen's portrait as well as Big Ben shown in gold foil on the front of the note and silver on the back.

Novelist Jane Austen will be the face of the new £10 note from summer 2017.

Artist JMW Turner will appear on the next £20 banknote, due to be issued by 2020.

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