Man finds rare new £1 coin with two different dates printed on it…and it could be £3,000
A WINDOW cleaner claims he has found an "extremely rare" new £1 coin printed with two different dates - and experts think it could be worth £3,000.
The coin has the year 2016 printed on one side of the coin - the year before the new coin even came into circulation - but on the converse side 2017 is engraved in micro-lettering.
Richard Birdsays hopes the Royal Mint error will land him a small fortune - as he cannot find any other examples online.
Previous misprints, including 20ps from 2008, have fetched more than 250 times their face value.
The coin was not introduced into circulation until March this year.
Richard, who began coin collecting after gaining a lot of change during his rounds, admits spending hours trying to spot a rare or special one.
Richard, from Hull, said: "I looked for information on it but couldn't find anything, apart from one mention on Change-checker so I think there's only one other recorded one.
"The Royal Mint don't seem to have even realised they have made this mistake."
A veteran coin expert has labelled the rare find as one which could fetch up to a cool £3,000 - but only if it gets verified by the Royal Mint itself.
Analyst Ken Walker from Britain's largest coin catalogue site Coin Centre UK, said: "Before the coin is worth anything it would need to be sent to the Royal Mint for them to check it.
"If the coin has two different dates on, this is usually where another coin has been stuck in the dye, incused and raised.
"That could be a major error if it was verified - meaning if it went up on eBay it could go for up to £3,000.
"An error like that could be worth a lot of money if it is the case, but the price of the coin would only be nominal until then."
Asked about the quantity the dodgy coin could fetch, he added: "People list coins for huge amounts - thousands - on eBay, but it is only the price that they sell for which actually matters.
"This style of selling coins for high value is common across coin collecting and I would urge Mr Birdsays to send the coin to the Royal Mint to be checked.
"Unfortunately, until it has pedigree after being verified it is not worth anything."
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Money collector website Change-checker reports rumours of the existence of coins with this genuine error.
If it is confirmed, the website believes the rare engraving is the result of mis-matched 2016 and 2017 dies being used during production.
Mr Bird says he is so passionate about collecting coins, his local bank has even stopped allowing him to take cash out in large sums of change due to his habit.
He added: "I started getting a lot of change with work and by asking for it in shops. I must have been getting £2,500 in change at times. I started taking it more seriously and was then selling gold and silver.
"I had been getting so much change from the bank that they wouldn't let me have more. I was chasing ice cream vans to get more change."
A spokesman for Changechecker.org said: "We've heard a few reports of differing dates on either side of the new £1 coin.
"As for its value, it's always difficult to say without knowing how many have been struck in this way; however, a similar die error in 2008 that resulted in around 250,000 20p coins going into circulation without a date is currently worth between £50 and £75."
Last month, we revealed the top 10 rarest £1 coins currently in circulation.
And we also rounded up the most valuable bank notes and coins that you could have in your wallet.
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