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!
Now, mintage figures from 2018 reveal that the nation’s rarest 50p coin is the 2009 Kew Gardens 50p, with just 210,000 in circulation. Given how rare it is, the coin has been selling online among. Undated 20p – (2008), rarest of 20p coins. Between November 2008 and 2009, 136,000,000 20p.
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
Valuable 50p Pieces
List Of Valuable 50p Coins
