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Hang on to your 'forged' new £1 coins - they could be highly valuable

A new £1 coin on the Royal Mint's production line - Bloomberg
A new £1 coin on the Royal Mint's production line - Bloomberg

The reportedly forged example of a new £1 coin is in fact the result of a production glitch, the Royal Mint has admitted, after studying images of the coin. Coin specialists now speculate that far from being a worthless fake, such coins could have great value to collectors and fetch prices far above their face value.

The coin, found by a charity worker in Surrey, has visible differences to a regular £1 coin, including missing the high security hologram.

The Royal Mint, which initially declined to comment on reports of the find, now says it is "confident" the coin is not a counterfeit.

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An independent coin expert who  examined images of the coin for The Telegraph believes these differences are the result of "mis-aligned printing" - the result of a malfunction in the striking process.

Numismatist Dominic Chorney of coin dealer A.H. Baldwin & Sons, said the clue lay in the fact that multiple elements of the coin are out of alignment.

"The coin appears to be a 'mis-strike', meaning it is a genuine coin which has become mis-aligned during the striking process," he said.

Mr Chorney explained that the complexity of the hologram means the mis-alignment appears to have removed it altogether (see below for how it works).

£1 coin error - Credit: South West News Service
The coin is visibly out of alignment and missing the hologramCredit: South West News Service

Previous printing errors have led to coins becoming sought-after, fetching prices far above their face value. Misprinted 20 pence coins from 2008, which due to printing errors are missing a date, typically sell for £50 or more - 250 times their face value.

It is thought that as many as 200,000 misprinted 20p pieces were manufactured - suggesting higher values could apply to errors occurring in smaller numbers.

The problem with valuing a misprinted new £1 is not knowing how many may have been produced.

A spokesman for the Royal Mint said: “We are not aware of any counterfeits entering circulation."

"Variances will always occur in a small number of coins, particularly in the striking process, due to the high volumes and speed of production."

The Mint produces around five billion coins each year, and will be striking 1.5 billion new £1 coins in total.

Mr Chorney said: "Mis-strikes have been valuable in the past, though it is difficult to gauge a value in this case since this is the first piece to come to light. Its value will be determined by how much collectors are willing to pay."

 

Pound coins - Credit: South West News Service
Several details appear incorrect Credit: South West News Service

If you find a mis-printed £1 coin, hang on to it, coin dealers advice. Collector interest is likely to develop rapidly if these are found to be rare.

The partner of charity worker Roy Wright, 48, received the coin pictured above in change from a Co-Op store in Addlestone, Surrey.

Mr Wright said he realised the coin was different when he picked up change from his bedside table to tip for a takeaway delivery. He believed it to be a forgery.

The most secure coin in the world?

According to the Royal Mint, roughly one in 30 of the old pound coins is a counterfeit - the equivalent of around £50m. To combat this, the new pound sports a number of security features.

The 12 sides and the milled edges are supposed to make the coin more distinctive and more difficult to forge.

The new coin has a “latent image”, similar to a hologram, etched on to it, which changes between a number 1 and a pound sign as the coin is turned.

The dual image arises due to tiny grooves cut into the coin's surface, catching light as it is moved. A misalignment of printing would destroy this effect.

Manufacturing the coin with two metals is a further way of making it harder to replicate. The outer ring is gold coloured nickel-brass and the inner circle is silver coloured nickel-plated alloy.

Royal Mint's explanation

Another hidden high-security feature is built into the coin itself. The Queen’s face contains an invisible code that proves the coins’ authenticity.

The code exists on the top layer of metal on the surface of the coin. It includes a pigment which is invisible to the naked eye.

It can only be read when subjected to a specific frequency of ultraviolet light installed in the Royal Mint’s special fake coin detection machines, sources close the the Royal Mint said.

The high-security code is crucial to the Royal Mint’s boast that the 12-sided coin is the “most secure coin in the world”.

Scott Kuperus, the technical manager for the new coin, explained that the security features did not mean that there would never be counterfeits.

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