When you were an eight-year old buying pic ‘n’ mix in the corner shop, coppers were where it was at.
Those 1ps were often the difference between one jelly spider and a whole army of them. But as you get older the only thing they’re good for is filling up an empty jar and hoping you can squeeze a tenner out of it at the end of the year.
It probably came as a bit of a shock, then, when a group of poppy collectors discovered that a 2p coin that they had dismissed as a fake was actually a collector’s item worth £2,000.
The coin, which was actually silver in colour rather than the standard copper, was dropped into a Royal British Legion collection tin in Wiltshire, according to The Mirror.
The volunteers assumed the coin was dodgy and handed it to the bank to be destroyed, but the Royal Mint have now confirmed that the coin was actually the result of a “minting error where a bank 10p coin was put mistakenly put in a 2p mint.
In 2014 a silver 2p from 1988 fetched more than £1,350 and experts reckon that that value may have increased to around £2,000 in 2016.
Earlier this month a rare 1930s penny was sold for an enormous £72,000, so while you obviously have to be ridiculously lucky to have one of these coins just hanging around in your wallet, it’s worth having a good look at them every now and again. You never know.
