Rare £1 coin you could 'find in your change' is worth £500

Daily Record

15-06-2025

The Royal Mint has confirmed that an error led some of these coins to be minted with an incorrect date.
Brits have been urged to look out for a 'highly sought-after' coin worth an impressive £500. This £1 piece from 2016 features a microscopic error that might be hard to spot.
The new 12-sided £1 coins entered circulation in the UK in April 2017, although a number of coins had also been minted in 2016 in preparation. However, some were struck with a tiny error along its rim.
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In a video uploaded to social media platform TikTok, an expert known as the Coin Collecting Wizard, explained how to find this valuable coin. He said: 'A rare £1 coin you can find in your change worth £500.
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'A highly sought-after error among collectors is the £1 coin with a wrong date micro-engraving, which has become a rare and valuable find. Introduced as part of the 2017 new 12-sided pound coin series, these coins usually feature a tiny micro-engraved date on the rim as an added security feature.'
The error means that the main date of the coin, by the Queen's head will say '2016' while a tiny inscription on its outer rim will say '2017'. The expert continued: 'However, a small number of these coins were mistakenly engraved with the wrong year for example, showing 2016 instead of 2017.
'This subtle but significant error went unnoticed by many making these coins particularly rare. Because the micro-engraving is so small and not easily visible without close inspection, these coins are prized discoveries for collectors and can fetch a premium price reflecting both their rarity and the intrigue of the minting mistake.'
The error on this coin has been confirmed by the Royal Mint.
Experts at Change Checker backed up his advice. They said: 'Firstly, although both 2016 and 2017 obverse-dated £1 coins entered circulation in April 2017, the die-error mix-up appears to have only occurred on a limited number of coins with a 2016 date on the Queen's head side. So it's worth checking any 2016 coins.
'You'll need to look just inside the rim of the design-side of the coin, where you will see some tiny writing. You'll almost certainly need a microscope to properly see the writing, which should reveal the date.'
According to them, an example of this coin was sold for £2,500 to a buyer in Spain in 2017. However, they estimated that the value of this coin, in excellent condition, is between £300 and £500.