Do you own the UK’s rarest 50p piece? And it’s not Kew Gardens.
Last week a 50p coin that many thousands of people have found in their daily pocket change started to be sold on e-Bay for prices upward of £100.00. Or to put it another way, 200 times its actual value!
Only 109,000 1992 EC 50p were issued into circulation – roughly half of the Kew Gardens 50p.
It was all because the Royal Mint announced that the Kew Gardens 50p coins is the UK’s most scarce circulation coin, with just 210,000 pieces ever been placed into circulation. The result was a media storm and the inevitable overnight ramping of prices.
Half the circulation of the Kew Gardens 50p
But what few people realise is that there is an even rarer UK 50p piece that was issued in half the number of the Kew Gardens coin – just 109,000 coins.
The coin was issued in 1992 to mark the EC Single Market and the UK presidency of the Council of Ministers – perhaps not the most popular of topics, which maybe was the reason so very few were pushed out into circulation. But of course, its lack of popularity at the time, is the very thing that now makes its Britain’s rarest 50p coin.
Sadly, however hard you search, unlike the Kew Gardens 50p, you will not find this one in your change. That’s because it is one of the old-sized 50p coins that were demonetised in 1998.
The coin itself was designed by Mary Milner Dickens and pictures the UK’s place at the head of the Council of Ministers’ conference table. The stars represent each of the nations’ capital cities placed in their relative geographical position.
But it won’t be the coin’s clever design that will guarantee its numismatic interest for years to come. It is its status as the UK’s most rare circulation 50p is what will intrigue collectors and have them searching and saving up in years to come.
Are you interested in owning the UK’s rarest 50p coin?
The 1992 EC Single Market 50p
Limited stocks of the 1992 EC 50p coin are available from The Westminster Collection for £20.
NOW SOLD OUT
I hear £2 coins, 1987,necklace, are worth holding on to. Is that correct? Xx
Hi Ros, they are certainly an interesting one-year-only design that deserve a place in any collection. In fact our friends over at Change Checker wrote about it in one of their blogs, take alook here: http://blog.changechecker.org/2015/04/30/always-pemember-the-facts-about-rare-2-coins/
Hello I have a Benjamin Britten coin, anyone interested?
I have a Kew Gardens and a Olympic 2 pound and the London aquatics 50 pence 3 very rare coins open to offers over 100gbp
hello,I have Benjamin Britten 50p,whether it’s something worth ?
i have one of these benjamin britten 50p coins
Hi. I have a circulated Kew Gardens 50p and an EU 50p, also 2 Trinity House £2 Coins. Are they worth holding on to, or is it better to sell now? Thanks!
Im after a 1992 EU 50p.Can any body help me!.
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I have a benjamin britten 50p how much is it worth seen them on ebay for 200 also 100 want to know if its actualy valuable