Fifty Pence Pieces - Value

Stop reading The Sun - your IQ goes up 20 points and your credit score too.


The coins were issued in two finishes - proofs for collectors and business strikes for circulation.

Proofs are specially manufactured, the blanks may be polished, the dies are polished, used for fewer strikes, the press uses more pressure. All combine to make a much more perfect coin. Sold to collectors for like 10 pounds.

The business strike coins are made to be used in everyday commerce. Not focused on making perfect coins. They get packaged in little baggies of 10 coins and sent off to the banks. On the way, they bang around against each other. They bang on other coins in your pocket, your car keys, etc. So by the time you find them, they have a lot of marks from use.

The very very few that came out of the baggie nearly perfect and were saved are worth more than face. But that's a few hundred out of the millions minted. There are collectors who want the very best and compete for it - those are the coins selling for the crazy prices quoted in the fish wrap (newspaper) and YouTube vids.

Welcome to the forum.

Beware ebay - some sellers are just on a mug hunt. ( For non UK readers, "mug" is UK slang for a person who is easily fooled, with a strong suggestion that they are partly to blame for allowing themself to be so easily fooled ).

If you are really interested in UK coin values, the Coin Yearbook 2020, costs £10 from any high street bookseller, will give you a realistic idea.

to the Forum, pieman!


with Anaximander!
Two weeks ago I put a set of all four 2017 Beatrix Potter 50p's on ebay - Tale of Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, Jeremy Fisher and Tom Kitten. They were normal circulating coins but I selected the nicest ones I could find with hardly any marks or scratches. I set the starting price at face value (£2) plus postage, and the coins sold for... £2.30! So to check the real value of a coin on ebay you should look at Sold Listings rather than coins currently on sale with no offers.