JustAnna

Do you think our Gordon is one step ahead of you Has anybody noticed the latest spin off from the 2008 error 20p? Namely the escalated and fantasy prices for the much scarcer 1983 twopence with the new pence reverse. A couple have gone up onto eBay yesterday, at, I think, £5,000 and £7500. Pretty obviously the owners saw the overblown hype about the 20p and some of the silly prices quoted and thought it would be a good idea to cash in with their 2ps! Won't be long before any 2p with the word new on it will be going for silly money I suppose. Hi Dave, yes noticed that and have also been through every 2p in our 2p jar! Got lots with new pence on but none from 1983. Thanks for all the good advice you lot gave about our mule 20p I am now after more advice! my 10 yr old went to a car boot sale at the weekend and came home with what he thinks is a very rare coin and a few old pennies. He now wants to start collecting old coins so it would be helpful if I could buy him a book that would help him with his new hobby! Can anyone recommend a good book for a beginer in coin collecting. Thanks again. Anna

Congrats Anna, you got a great price but not extortionate. So you can hold your head up! By the way, did you notice that your auction had 1,100 views - in 24 hours!!!! There is one, that is ending in 3 days, on a five day listing, that has already had 27,000 views!! Utter madness. There are now more than 2,000 results when you search for 'undated 20p', many just scams of one sort or another. The most expensive is £15,000........or best offer! David Hi David, thank you. My 3 boys have searched the house high and low looking for more 20p's!!! Even down the sides of sofa's and they have cleaned their rooms!! No 'Mule' found though (notice the technical term? I always thought a mule was a donkey! lol) Yes I know what you mean about all the fake ones on ebay. I cant believe how devious people can be to try and sell a normal 20p for hundreds of pound but then again I cant believe some people are daft enough to fall for it! Out of interest do you lot on here just deal in coins -or do you know about bank notes too? I have got some old Italian lira that my granddad left me many years ago. I keep them in between pages of a book that is never read on the top shelf of book case so they dont get messed about with. I don't know if that is the best place to store them. Any way any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again Anna

Hi David, auction has finished. We got £240 for it. We are off to Argos now. My son is so pleased that he can buy a PS3 for £50 and of course 20p! Thanks for all the advice given by you guys. Anna

lol yes David. I may be blonde but its dyed! I will of course let you know how much it sells for - I put it on at a 99p start and its already up to £21 with 23 hours to go! I will try and upload my ebay pics too so you can see it!

Anna, Rob's advice is sound, this is nothing but midsummer madness, however if you are going to auction it on ebay it might be a good idea to go for a quick 3 day auction, rather than a ten day one, in case this whole thing blows up! David Hi Dave, Thanks for your response. Was going to go for a day sale though! Before any of the silly people bidding silly money find this forum and read what I have read! Thanks again for your advice Anna

Anna, In making this decision, you have to understand a little of the history of this error coin. When they were first discovered some months ago, examples were going on eBay for initially £250 or so. As more and more were found, the law of supply and demand took over and prices started to fall, until around a week ago you could get one for £25, which is probably the going rate. Then all of a sudden the Times 'broke the story' and suddenly the world and his wife goes mad trying to find these error coins and prices on eBay rocket to, as you say, £5800 - there is one on there at present for £8000 on a 'buy it now' basis. However, for a coin to be worth this kind of money it usually has to be extremely rare. Take the 1933 penny, for instance, of which there are about 6 examples. These go for huge money if they are ever available, but precisely because they are so rare. The question you need to ask is whether this coin is truly rare and the simple answer is no, as there are currently some 250+ examples on eBay at the moment. Also, there has been a steady stream of these on eBay for months now, and the Royal Mint seems to think that there are 200,000 examples out there. If you consider that the 1913 third farthing had a mintage of 288,000 only, yet you can buy one in very nice condition for £50 or less then you will see that this error coin whilst scarce and interesting is not rare. So what do you conclude from this? Firstly, the current bubble will subside when people start to realise that there are not fortunes to be made from this coin, just a modest profit, if you are lucky enough to find one. Secondly, to get any kind of premium price, you need to get in quick whilst the bubble is still expanding. Thirdly, forget the sort of four figure sums seen on eBay. If you look at the £5800 coin you will see that the anonymous bidders who took it up to £5000 or so, all have virtually no feedback and are, therefore, in all probability fake bids to try and push the price up or 'fix' the market in peoples minds. I doubt very much whether they were genuine bids and I also doubt whether the winning price will be paid. More likely the seller will claim a refund of fees from eBay from a non-paying bidder. Hello DaveG38 Thanks to you too for taking the time to respond to my post. Looks like we will be putting the coin on ebay and we will be happy with what we get! Hopefully there will be someone daft enough to pay over the going rate for this coin. If not what ever we get will be more that '20p'! I have found info given by yourself and Rob who also responded very helpful - I will not be buying a safe to keep it locked up in for a few years! Thanks again guys Anna

It will always be a collectable coin as long as there are people collecting them because the Royal Mint makes very few errors and this is a true error coin as opposed to a faulty strike which would be a random event. Having said that, 2 minutes ago on ebay there were 563 undated 20p coins listed. These have been known about for months and have had a continuous presence on ebay since their discovery, so ebay listings alone must run into thousands. The mint estimated 100,000-200,000 were struck. This is NOT rare. The general consensus is that they are worth about £30 or so based on coins of similar rarity. If you can find someone stupid enough to pay £300 or whatever for it then I suggest you take the money and run. You can always find another one to replace it, and if you really want one for posterity you should be able to get one for a few tens of pounds by waiting long enough for the hysteria to die away. This is a ludicrously overheated market. Hi Rob, Thank you very much for your advice. Looks like I will be taking your advice 'taking the money and running to the nearest shop which sells a play station 2 if my son has anything to do with it!!!' As you say, if someone is daft enough to pay over the odds for it well I guess my son can purchase his PS2 instead of just a game for it! Looks like there will now be 564 undated 20p coins listed on ebay now! lol. Thanks again - and have a good day Anna

Hello Everyone, I have just come on this site for some advice really. I'm not a coin collector and thought this would be the best place to get an honest answer to my question about this 20p Date Error coin. My 10 year old son has found one in his money box and now thinks he is the richest boy in the world! We are watching a few on ebay and one went last night for £5800.00. I have tried to explain to him that it is very unlikely that the seller of that coin will get that sort of money. Can someone tell me what we should do with our coin? Should we stick it on ebay and hope for the best or keep it safely tucked away and re visit it in 5 or 10 years? Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read this Anna (mother of a 'supposedly' rich 10 year old!! )