Valuable 50p
In the past, we've revealed the most valuable sought after coins after one seller pocketed £5,000 from flogging his Battle of Hasting's 50p. Coins with mistakes tend to be among the highest values. It also gives you an idea of how much a coin can eventually be worth. This 50 pence coin was introduced in 1973 to help celebrate our entry into the EU. It’s estimated that only 5000 were made and that the majority were given to senior officials. One of the rarest 50p coins, estimated value: £3,000.
A 50p design featuring the Royal Shield of Arms, which was released two years ago, is currently the second rarest 50p coin in circulation behind the 2009 Kew Gardens.
Designs that are produced annually are sometimes overlooked in rankings of rare coins, in favour of ‘commemorative’ pieces – yet less than two million of the Royal Shield of Arms were minted in the year 2017.
Which? reveals the rarest 50p coins and how mintage influences the value of a coin.
What is the rarest 50p coin?
The 2009 Kew Gardens 50p coin remains the rarest of all coins with just 210,000 in circulation.
But if you include definitive coins – meaning those produced annually – then the second rarest 50p design is the 2017 Royal Shield of Arms.
This coin was originally designed by Matthew Dent following a public competition.
According to coin collecting site Change Checker, the Royal Shield of Arms has been issued every year since 2008 apart from 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2016.
The 2017 version is by far and away the rarest, with just 1.8 million minted, in comparison to 10.3 million in 2013, 49 million in 2014 and 39.3 million in 2015.
The third rarest coin in circulation remains the Sir Isaac Newton 50p, which has a release of just 1.8m.
The chart below shows the current rarest 50p designs based on mintage figures from the Royal Mint.
Definitive vs commemorative coins
The Royal Mint issues ‘definitive’ coins every year based on demand. The same design is produced annually, with just the year changing.
These types of coins are sometimes ignored by collectors but in cases such as the Royal Shield of Arms 2017, they can also be extremely rare.
By contrast, commemorative coins are released to mark a particular occasions, person or event, so tend to be a one-off design.
Valuable 50p Pieces
Often, these coins are first released as collector’s editions by the Royal Mint, with some versions then entering general circulation.
Special 50p have been released this year celebrating the anniversary of The Gruffalo, the famous kids’ book Peter Rabbit and the deceased British professor Stephen Hawking.
How does mintage affect a coins value?
Mintage figures can have a massive impact on the coin’s value in the market.
Generally, the harder the coin is for collectors to find, the more they are likely to pay for the coin. This can partly be determined by mintage, but also the popularity of the design.
As the 2012 Olympic coins drop out of circulation by getting lost or snatched up in collections, their value has been increasing, with the football and wrestling designs particularly popular.
Which? has looked at the average price on three recent sales on eBay for particularly rare 50p coins – the Kew Gardens 2009, the Royal Shield of Arms 2017 and the Olympic 2012 wrestling design – and the results are below:
You can see that despite the rarity of the Royal Shield of Arms coin, it doesn’t fetch a huge premium – perhaps because the design doesn’t resonate with the public in the same way.
That said, collectors are advised to treat eBay listings with caution.
Some sellers will list coins at an inflated price, or bid on their own product to make it look there’s a bigger demand.
Remember that coins are only worth whatever a buyer is willing to pay for them – even if you’ve found a rare coin, you may not be able to sell it on for a profit.
What else affects the coin’s value?
The value of a coin can also depend on whether a particular design is sought-after or sentimental.
If the coin design is more popular, people are more likely to hang onto the coin and keep it from circulation.
Also the condition of a coin and whether it is from scratches or marks can have a significant impact on its value.
However an error on a coin can have the opposite effect and make them much rarer and more sought after than ‘perfect’ versions.
Last year Which? carried out a three-month investigation into the dark side of the coin investment craze – see our video below to find out which types of coins could be worth investing in, and scams to watch out for.
- Read the full investigation: Revealed: the dark side of the coin investment craze
There are now over 35 different 50p coin designs in circulation and, as an avid coin collector, there’s nothing better than finding a sought-after 50p in your change!
But with so many in circulation, how can you tell which are the ones to look for?
Luckily for you, we’ve done the leg work and compiled a number of resources to help you determine how rare your 50p is and how much it might be worth.
Mintages
A sure fire way to know if you’ve found a keeper is to check the mintage figures for your 50p. Generally speaking, the lower the mintage, the rarer the coin and the harder it will be to find in circulation.
Here are the most up to date mintage charts for UK 50p coins in circulation, with the UK’s rarest circulation 50p, Kew Gardens sat in top spot with the lowest mintage figures – just 210,000 of this coin were struck! Sir Isaac Newton is a newcomer to the mintage charts, but has knocked Jemima Puddle Duck off second spot with a mintage of just 1,800,000. Have you found one in your change?
eBay Tracker
Mintage figures are a great way to find out how many of your coin were released into circulation and therefore how difficult it might be to find, but this doesn’t necessarily give you a value for your coin. One way in which you can determine what your coin might be worth is to look at the prices it has sold for on eBay.
Again, we’ve made things easy for you by taking the last 9 sold prices achieved on eBay and giving you the median price achieved (rounded to the nearest 50p). By taking the median, rather than an average, we avoid skewing created by one or two excessive prices achieved.
Here’s the top 5 highest selling UK circulation 50p coins from our eBay Tracker, with Kew Gardens not surprisingly having the highest selling price, followed by the Olympic 50ps (the coin series that gave Britain the collecting bug back in 2012) and the 2017 Tom Kitten from the ever popular Beatrix Potter 50p series. This coin has recently been spotted in circulation by Change Checkers, but have you found one in your change?
Scarcity Index
To give you a complete picture of how your coin compares to other 50ps in circulation, we have combined the mintage information with two other key pieces of information to provide the Change Checker Scarcity Index:
- How many of each design are listed as “collected” by Change Checkers, indicating the relative ease of finding a particular coin.
- The number of times a design has been requested as a swap over the previous 3 months, showing the current level of collector demand.
Here’s our most recent Scarcity Index for 50p coins, with yet again Kew Gardens coming in on top as the most scarce 50p. Where does your 50p rank on the Scarcity Index?
So now you have access to a range of tools to help indicate how rare your 50p is and what it might be worth. Of course, these figures will change in time as the latest 50ps are released into circulation, so you never know, we could see the elusive Kew Gardens kicked off top spot one day!
Have you found any rare coins in your change recently? Let us know in the comments below.
If you’re interested in coin collecting, our Change Checker web app is completely free to use and allows users to:
– Find and identify the coins in their pocket
– Collect and track the coins they have
– Swap their spare coins with other Change Checkers
Sign up today at: www.changechecker.org/app