The exact year to spot on ultra-rare 1p coin worth £200,000 at auction
Published: Invalid Date,
COLLECTORS are being urged to check their change as an ultra-rare 1p coin could be worth a life-changing sum.
A TikTok user recently showcased the rare penny coin in a video, claiming it is one of the "rarest and most valuable" British coins.
The coin is believed to be worth a jaw dropping £200,000 at auction.
But you'll have to check your pennies carefully as the odds of finding one are extremely slim.
The penny in question is a 1933 stamped 1p coin.
Only a handful were ever made – just six or seven, according to experts.
Back in 1933, the Royal Mint didn't issue any pennies for circulation because there were already plenty in use.
Instead, a small number were specially struck for ceremonial use, including to be buried under church foundation stones or government buildings.
One was laid beneath the University of London's Senate House, where it still remains today.
Another was stolen from a Leeds church in the 1970s and has never been recovered.
The 1933 penny is often called the 'Holy Grail' of British coins and is so rare that most collectors will never even see one in their lifetime.
The coin features King George V on one side and Britannia seated on the other.
Rare £2 coin
In 2016, a proof version of the coin sold for £72,000, while other reports suggest examples have gone for well over £100,000, depending on their condition.
Coin experts warn that fakes are common and many people mistakenly think they've found one, when they're actually holding a far more common 1936 penny.
Experts say anyone who believes they may own a genuine one should get it properly authenticated by a trusted coin dealer or auction house.
With demand from collectors showing no signs of slowing, rare coins like the 1933 penny continue to soar in value meaning this humble 1p could be worth a fortune.
But if you don't score lucky with this one, there are other coins to look out for.
In fact, just recently, an ultra-rare 1p coin from 1954 has appeared at auction with a reserve price of £90,000, and experts reckon it could go for as much as £120,000.
Another TikTok user, known for coin-collecting content, showcased the elusive penny in a viral video, calling it one of the "rarest and most mysterious" British coins ever made.
Other coins are raking in big money, too, including a 2p with the wording "New Pence" instead of 'Two Pence', which can sell for around £1,000.
Some 2012 Olympic 50p coins featuring a cartoon-style high jumper have gone for £142 to £216, while a rare misprint with horizontal lines has been snapped up for £3,000.
Even certain £2 coins with a cat design could fetch over 100 times their face value, so it might be worth checking your pockets.
Selling your rare coins
A coin's condition and mintage will affect its value, so it's important to do your homework first.
If you've got a potentially rare coin that you would like to sell at auction, you can contact The Royal Mint's Collectors Service.
It has a team of experts who can help you to authenticate and value your coin.
You will need to enquire via email, and a member of the valuation team will get back to you.
Take a picture of your coin and attach it to the email - you can find all the details on The Royal Mint's website.
If you're selling on eBay, be vigilant about scammers.
If you're feeling uneasy about the deal, meet the seller in person in a public, safe place so you know you are not being conned.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
The forgotten story of the world's deadliest plane crash
Tragedy generally hits hardest close to home, where the places and locations in question can trigger grief and trauma long after the initial event has slipped queasily into the past. Which might explain why the collective British memory does not easily recall the deadliest plane crash of all time: a catastrophe that took place more than 8,000 miles away, on the other side of the planet, but claimed 520 lives. It did so an exact 40 years ago today, on August 12 1985, on a wild mountainside, 60 miles north-west of Tokyo. The fate of Flight 123 is certainly not forgotten in Japan, where the scarring is still visible (there will be commemorations at the crash site today, as there are every year). True, its loss of life did not match the 583 victims of the Tenerife Air Disaster of March 27 1977, where two Boeing 747s collided on the runway on the largest of the Canary Islands. Nor does it equate to the unique circumstances of the two Boeing 767s flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11 2001. But Flight 123 holds its own dark position in the annals of aviation – as the deadliest crash involving a single aircraft. A ticking time bomb Perhaps inevitably, with a fatality count of such awful weight, that aircraft was also a 747 – specifically a 747 SR-46, toiling away for Japan Airlines (JAL). 'SR' stands for 'short range', with the plane part of the boom in domestic flights in the Land of the Rising Sun that took hold in the early 1970s. Demand was so high that, in 1972, JAL placed an order with Boeing for a bespoke version of the 'Jumbo Jet' – one adapted for maximum passenger capacity, but with strengthened body structure and landing gear able to cope with the regular take-offs and landings (and considerable stress) inherent in short-haul flying. So it was that the 747 SR-46 emerged from Boeing's Seattle plant with space for 498 travellers; a figure that would rise to 550 after further modification. It made its first commercial flight, for JAL, on October 7 1973. JA8119 – to use its registration number – arrived in the JAL fleet in 1974, and promptly became a workhorse. By the time of its demise in 1985, it had chalked up 25,000 hours of flying, and 18,800 flights; the majority of them quick trips back and forth between Tokyo and Japan's other major cities. Flight 123 – a scheduled service from Haneda Airport in the capital to Itami Airport in Osaka, which should have taken one hour – was the fifth of six short hops it was due to make that day. However, the cause of the disaster was not rooted in that summer afternoon in the mid-1980s. It had been planted seven years earlier – and with a grim symmetry, on the same route. On June 2 1978, JA8119 was damaged by a heavy touch-down at Itami. The landing was so jarring that the 747's tail hit the runway (a 'tailstrike') – so forcefully that this caused cracking in the rear bulkhead, a vital component of any plane's pressurisation system. The breakage was repaired, swiftly but – it would transpire – insufficiently. JA8119 had 8,830 hours on its log at the time of the strike, and would fly on, without much further incident, for 16,170 more. Yet deep within its fuselage, a clock was ticking. The death toll from the crash was tragically inflated by unfortunate timing: August 12 1985 fell within Obon season – a celebration of ancestral spirits, effectively Japan's 'Day of the Dead', which moves around the calendar, but generally sees the Japanese travel home in great numbers to spend time with loved ones. So it was that JA8119 was full of families for its early-evening departure. The records indicate that, of the 524 passengers and crew on board, 502 were Japanese. They included one notable celebrity – the 43-year-old singer and actor, Kyu Sakamoto. 32 unthinkable minutes JA8119 took off from Haneda at 6.12pm, a little behind schedule. For the next 12 minutes, it proceeded as normal. But at 6.24pm, as the 747 SR-46 crossed the coastal waters of Sagami Bay, 50 miles south-west of Tokyo, the decade-old patch-up job on its rear bulkhead finally failed. The plane suffered an explosive decompression which brought down the ceiling at the back of the economy cabin, severed all four hydraulic lines and knocked out the vertical stabiliser. At a stroke, the jet was all but uncontrollable. At the opposite end of the aircraft, Captain Masami Takahama – a 49-year-old pilot of significant experience – remained calm. A distress call was put out; an emergency plan to turn Flight 123 around and return to Haneda was discussed. But it soon became clear that JA8119 was incapable of nuanced manoeuvre. Cockpit recordings suggest its crew was already beginning to suffer from hypoxia, a lack of oxygen in the decompressing jet leading to slow answers and an audible difficulty in comprehending instructions. In the 21 minutes which followed the explosion, JA8119 flew erratically, lurching and rolling, gaining and losing altitude – and, crucially, swerving north, so that it was back over land. Its final 11 minutes were a desperate struggle. By 6.45pm, the jet was descending rapidly, had plunged to 13,500ft (4,100m), and was veering towards high mountains. At 6.46pm, Takahama was heard to utter the weary words: 'This may be hopeless.' At 6.49pm, there was a brief stall, at 9,000ft (2,700m). And while this was corrected, seven minutes later, at 6.56pm, JA8119 clipped a ridge on 1,979m Mount Takamagahara in Japan's central Gunma Prefecture. The collision dislodged the end third of the right wing, and two of the four engines. Now conclusively disabled, the 747 flipped onto its back, struck a second ridge, and exploded. The impact was so violent that it registered on the seismometer at the Shin-Etsu Earthquake Observatory, 100 miles away. It is impossible to say how many people were still alive in the immediate aftermath of the crash, because the rescue mission was as poorly executed as the repair work that had led to the disaster. It was still daytime when JA8119 went into the mountain, but as the light faded, a Japanese military helicopter did a cursory scan of the site, and reported no obvious signs of life. With night imminent, and the terrain challenging, paramedics did not attempt to reach the wreckage until the following morning. Interviewed in her hospital bed, Yumi Ochiai, an off-duty flight attendant who was one of just four survivors – all female; all of whom had been sitting on the left hand side of the cabin, between rows 54 and 60 – remembered seeing lights and listening to the noise of rotor blades after waking up in the charred remains of the plane. She expected help to arrive, she said, but the only sounds she heard for the next few hours were the cries of the injured and dying. The fallout The government response was rather more clear-eyed. The official inquiry, which released its findings on June 19 1987, placed the blame on the inadequate repair in 1978. By that point, JAL president Yasumoto Takagi had already lost his job; he tendered his resignation on August 24 1985, less than a fortnight after the crash. Sadly, the catastrophe claimed two further victims as its aftershocks reverberated around Japan. Two JAL employees – maintenance manager Hiroo Tominaga, and engineer Susumu Tajima, who had inspected JA8119 after the tailstrike incident, and had declared it airworthy – took their own lives, buckling beneath the psychological burden of the disaster. Forty years on, the crash site is home to a memorial; two unadorned stone triangles, set against the slope. The relatives of the dead gather there every August 12, perhaps taking small consolation from Mount Takamagahara's place in Japanese folklore as a parallel to Greece's Mount Olympus; a heavenly home of the gods. There are more tangible echoes as well. Not least the Safety Promotion Center, a museum attached to Haneda Airport, which examines the causes of the disaster, and the lessons to be learnt from it. Among its artefacts are fragments of the plane, and farewell letters written by its passengers in the 32 unthinkable minutes when they were probably aware that they were going to die. JAL has recovered to be Japan's second biggest airline, but suffered an inevitable decline in the wake of Flight 123; passenger numbers fell by a third in the next year, as a wary public avoided the brand. Nonetheless, not everyone affected by the crash was put off flying. Captain Takahama's daughter Yoko became a flight attendant, working for JAL.
Rhyl Journal
2 hours ago
- Rhyl Journal
Letter reveals how wartime codebreakers were told jobs had ended after VJ Day
The intelligence agency has published historic documents to mark the 80th anniversary of Victory in Japan Day, shedding light on what happened to staff who deciphered Nazi messages during the Second World War. A first letter dated August 12 1945 was sent to staff at GCHQ's wartime headquarters, Bletchley Park, days before VJ Day was declared on August 15. It said: 'All staff except the absolute minimum necessary to maintain essential services, will be granted two days paid holidays to mark the end of hostilities in Asia.' According to GCHQ, extra holiday would not have been usual for staff working at the agency, then called GC&CS (Government Code and Cypher School). The document added: 'After the VJ holidays, it is hoped that there will be no further shift working at B/P except for 'essential services'.' GCHQ staff were bound by the Official Secrets Act and were unable to talk about their secret work they carried out during the war. The second letter documents a template for telling staff their employment had ended. Their managers would have filled in the correct dates and sent it to their teams. It reads: 'Owing to the cessation of the hostilities, there is no further work for you to do in this organisation. In these circumstances there is no object in continuing to report here for duty, and with effect from ****** you are free to absent yourself. 'This letter is to be taken as formal notice of the termination of your employment in this department.' The documents show what happened to British war efforts in the days surrounding the surrender of Imperial Japan in the Second World War. At the once-secret site, wartime codebreakers used early forms of computer intelligence – cryptanalytical machines called bombes – to break the Enigma code used by the Nazis to encrypt messages, changing the course of the war and saving millions of lives. Their work enabled British intelligence to move more quickly and act on the information the Bletchley team gave them, contributing to a number of key military victories. It also sparked the industrialisation of codebreaking and helped pave the way for the first forms of the computers used today. After the war, in 1946, GC&CS became GCHQ and moved out of Bletchley Park, developing into the intelligence and cyber agency it is today. GCHQ director of technology futures Marsha Quallo-Wright said: 'As someone working at the forefront of new and emerging technology for GCHQ, understanding our rich history is as important to me as looking to our future. 'We have a lot to thank our predecessors for, and the dedication and innovation shown by those working at Bletchley Park, GCHQ's wartime home, never ceases to amaze me. 'These documents help us to understand what happened to that workforce after six long years when VJ Day was declared. I'm pleased that we're able to offer this insight into their world.'
Leader Live
6 hours ago
- Leader Live
Letter reveals how wartime codebreakers were told jobs had ended after VJ Day
The intelligence agency has published historic documents to mark the 80th anniversary of Victory in Japan Day, shedding light on what happened to staff who deciphered Nazi messages during the Second World War. A first letter dated August 12 1945 was sent to staff at GCHQ's wartime headquarters, Bletchley Park, days before VJ Day was declared on August 15. It said: 'All staff except the absolute minimum necessary to maintain essential services, will be granted two days paid holidays to mark the end of hostilities in Asia.' According to GCHQ, extra holiday would not have been usual for staff working at the agency, then called GC&CS (Government Code and Cypher School). The document added: 'After the VJ holidays, it is hoped that there will be no further shift working at B/P except for 'essential services'.' GCHQ staff were bound by the Official Secrets Act and were unable to talk about their secret work they carried out during the war. The second letter documents a template for telling staff their employment had ended. Their managers would have filled in the correct dates and sent it to their teams. It reads: 'Owing to the cessation of the hostilities, there is no further work for you to do in this organisation. In these circumstances there is no object in continuing to report here for duty, and with effect from ****** you are free to absent yourself. 'This letter is to be taken as formal notice of the termination of your employment in this department.' The documents show what happened to British war efforts in the days surrounding the surrender of Imperial Japan in the Second World War. At the once-secret site, wartime codebreakers used early forms of computer intelligence – cryptanalytical machines called bombes – to break the Enigma code used by the Nazis to encrypt messages, changing the course of the war and saving millions of lives. Their work enabled British intelligence to move more quickly and act on the information the Bletchley team gave them, contributing to a number of key military victories. It also sparked the industrialisation of codebreaking and helped pave the way for the first forms of the computers used today. After the war, in 1946, GC&CS became GCHQ and moved out of Bletchley Park, developing into the intelligence and cyber agency it is today. GCHQ director of technology futures Marsha Quallo-Wright said: 'As someone working at the forefront of new and emerging technology for GCHQ, understanding our rich history is as important to me as looking to our future. 'We have a lot to thank our predecessors for, and the dedication and innovation shown by those working at Bletchley Park, GCHQ's wartime home, never ceases to amaze me. 'These documents help us to understand what happened to that workforce after six long years when VJ Day was declared. I'm pleased that we're able to offer this insight into their world.'
