A rare 50p ‘error’ coin sells for a whopping £4,500

A new super-rare 50p has been discovered, and experts say one could be in your spare change.

The Britannia Coin Company, based in Royal Wootton Bassett, sold the coin a few days ago to a private coin collector for a whopping £4,500.

The coin is a rare mint error which is a Gibraltar 50p which has a portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth II on the heads side, along with the date 1990.

Diligent change checkers sometimes find 50ps and other coins from the Channel Islands and British overseas territories.

The design on the other side of the coin is Christmas-themed, showing a choir boy and a puppy. The chorister design is usually seen on 1989-dated coins, meaning that the heads and tails sides are mismatched.

Coins with mistakes like these are known as ‘mules’, taking their name from the offspring of a horse and a donkey. This coin was found by a private seller who asked the team at the Wiltshire company to sell it on their behalf.

‘These non-UK 50ps are already rarer than the ones we are used to seeing in our change,” said Christopher Collects, a coin expert and YouTuber who works for The Britannia Coin Company.

"As this is the only example of this particular manufacturing mistake that has been found so far, this coin is one of the rarest modern coins out there.

"Since the error has only just been discovered, nobody has been looking for it, so there could definitely be more.”

The £4,500 sale price makes this 50p much more valuable than the 2009 Kew Gardens 50p. Examples of this well-known rare coin can sell online today for around £250.

Christopher said: “I was worried this coin was a fake, so I got a second opinion from the experts at the Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC). They are specialists in rare coins and authenticated the Gibraltar 50p as a real mint error. That’s why it's in a protective case with a unique reference number: because it was added to their database.”

Other examples of mint error coins where a problem occurred in the manufacturing process are undated 20ps. In 2008, The Royal Mint released about 250,000 20ps into circulation without a date on the coin. Today, these error coins can sell for more than £100.

The Gibraltar 50p coin was authenticated by one of the world’s top coin grading and assessment services - The Numismatic Guarantee Company and can be found on their online register of authenticated coins.