People are being encouraged to rummage through their change as a rare 50 pence piece could be worth a small fortune. Specifically, a 2017 Benjamin Bunny coin with a distinctive error might just make you £50 richer.
Part of a quartet released in 2017 to honour Beatrix Potter’s legacy, which also includes Peter Rabbit, Tom Kitten, and Jeremy Fisher, the Benjamin Bunny coin stands out due to a minting mishap. This error results in Queen Elizabeth II appearing to face the wrong direction.
The Coin Collector UK, a coin aficionado with over 160,000 TikTok followers, shared his insights: “Sell this 50p for £40 to £50 if you find the rare error version of the Benjamin Bunny in your change.”
He further detailed the specific error collectors should look for: “You can see on the regular version when we flip the coin around, the Queen is looking directly to the right,” he said. “However, in 2017 the Royal Mint did end up producing some errors. “
He added: “You can see where we flip this one round, she’s looking upright. This is called a rotation error, they’re quite uncommon.”
Last year, The Sun highlighted a case where one of these coins fetched £40 – a whopping 80 times its face value of 50p. And in 2021, another coin from the same batch was snapped up for an eye-watering £255 on eBay.
The expert continued: “I’ve only ever found this one on the Benjamin Bunny, you don’t come across these too often on your 50ps. It’s usually the £2 coins that have rotation errors.”
“But it’s always worth a check. If you flip it round from the top and the Queen’s looking upright or in any other direction other than to the right then it’s worth about £40 to £50.”
However, he noted that the standard version of this coin is typically valued at just 50p. He explained: “They don’t come up for sale too often, but this seems to be the average selling price on eBay. The regular version of the coin without the error is unfortunately only worth 50p as they minted 25 million of these upon release.”