Check your purses, wallets, sofas and under the bed
You could have a unique coin sitting around your home worth thousands and not even know it. However, you may want to double-check the coin before getting too excited.
This is because fake versions are circulating that can be difficult to spot. The coin in question is the 50p Olympic Aquatics coin which dons the late-Queen on one side and on the other, a swimmer with lines and waves to represent the water.
According to the Royal Mint, the Aquatics fifty-pence piece was designed by Jonathan Olliffe. On the coin, you can see the swimmer’s face; however, on fakes, and some of the valuable coins which have been “withdrawn”, you cannot see their face as clearly.
So how can you tell what is fake and what’s not? Some coins, according to Check Your Change, were “withdrawn”.
The reason for this is that the lines were going through the swimmer’s face. The updated coin has no lines going through the face of the swimmer, making it easier to see.
So what does this mean? The parts of the coin you need to look at carefully all have to do with the lines, as mentioned, the Olympian’s face and lettering. The coin experts note: “The error coin is probably the most valuable coin that you could potentially find if you Check Your Change!
“Watch out for normal reverse coins that have had extra lines scratched into them to be passed off as the error coin.”
It further warns about the “fakes” out there, explaining: “They seem to come from China and are quite convincing. On good quality fakes, the Queen is more frosted, the ear and the eye are not well executed and the lettering is thinner.”
One of the more common coins, which does not have the error, is currently selling on eBay for £2,046.70 with others on sale for £2,000. Meanwhile, some coins with the lines are selling in excess of £500.
Speaking about the 2011 coin, which has a mintage of 2,179,000, as reported by The Royal Mint, Jonathan explained: “I chose aquatics because of the challenge that water posed in creating that illusion of water on a fifty pence coin.
“My background as a silversmith, I feel helped in a sense of thinking about how engraving works and the illusion of the lines engraved into the metal and the simplicity of engraving.”
