Rare Johnson's 50p coin fetches a whopping £2,800 on eBay during auction

4 August 2020, 17:45

You should look down the back of your sofa and check if you have any of the rare coins hidden there!

A very rare Samuel Johnson's coin has been auctioned on eBay for a very impressive price, fetching its owner more than £2.8k.

This was over five thousand times the coin's original value, and was one of a reasonably sized batch that entered circulation fifteen years ago in 2005.

These 2p error coins circulating could be worth a lot of money

They were created to mark a whopping 250 years of the scholar's dictionary, with the back of the coin featuring some snippets of words marked in the dictionary.

Some of these were "fifty" and "pence", with the front of the coin dated 2005.

Two bids were placed on the eBay auction's listing, which was on the site for a week before it sold for thousands back in June of this year.

The seller was based in Bromley and we're hoping they pocketed the cash, as there's no way of checking if the buyer actually paid the money in the end, as sometimes sales can fall through and the seller has to start a claim for unpaid goods.

On the eBay listing, it was described as "extremely rare", however, some sites have estimated it could only be worth as little as £1, says Coin Hunter.

The Samuel Johnson dictionary coins went into circulation back in 2015 with 17 million of them being entered, which is considered pretty high in comparison to other rare coins.

The rarest of the bunch you could find right now is the Kew Gardens 50p coin where only 210,000 of them entered circulation.