Rare 50p coin sells for £110 after fierce bidding war – exact detail to look out for

The Sun

2 days ago

A RARE 50p coin has sold for £110 after a fierce bidding war - we reveal the exact details to spot.
The 2009 Kew Gardens piece was sold to one lucky punter after fighting off offers from 12 other bidders.
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There are around 210,000 of these coins in circulation, making it a very rare find.
The front of this coin has an image of the late Queen Elizabeth II, with the engraver's initials, Ian Rank-Broadley, below.
But what makes this coin special is the design on the reverse.
The tails side features a leafy vine wrapped around a Chinese pagoda.
It also has the date of the year it was made to commemorate the anniversary.
Plus, you might be able to get more than £110 for the coin.
Last month, one of these coins sold for £127.08 after 16 people tried to bid for it.
That makes it a whopping 254 times its face value.
And earlier this week, one of these coins sold for £120 on eBay after a bidding war, with 13 offers placed.
But you might not always fetch such a high sum for the piece, with one seller on eBay flogging the same coin for £34 after 11 bids.
Five 50ps that could earn you thousands
The Kew Gardens piece is not the only rare coin that can be worth a pretty penny.
The 2009 Blue Peter piece also recently sold for £180 after 21 bids.
It was released in 2009 ahead of the London Olympic games in 2012.
The coin features someone doing the high jump on one side, a design created by eight-year-old Florence Jackson from Bristol.
The final design was chosen from over 17,000 entries as part of a Blue Peter competition.
How to spot rare coins and banknotes
Rare coins and notes hiding down the back of your sofa could sell for hundreds of pounds.
If you are lucky enough to find a rare £10 note you might be able to sell it for multiple times its face value.
You can spot rare notes by keeping an eye out for the serial numbers.
These numbers can be found on the side with the Monarch's face, just under the value £10 in the corner of the note.
Also, if you have a serial number on your note that is quite quirky, you could cash in thousands.
For example, one seller bagged £3,600 after spotting a specific serial number relating to the year Jane Austen was born on one of their notes.
You can check if your notes are worth anything on eBay, just tick "completed and sold items" and filter by the highest value.
This will give you an idea of what people are willing to pay for some notes.
But bear in mind that yours is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it.
This is also the case for coins, you can determine how rare your coin is by looking a the latest scarcity index.