Grab a Game for 20p

How many 20p coins do you have? If you’ve had your eye on the (British) news at all this week, you’ll know that the ‘Royal Mint’ made a muck-up of their most recent coin production, leaving tens of thousands of 20p pieces without a date stamped on them. The company moved the year to the Queen’s side last year, but have now accidentally printed the coins with the new tails side and the old heads side, leaving no date to be seen. So what? It’s just a date, right?

It’s more than that. While the 20p coins are still worth £0.20, ‘experts’ and coin collectors alike are buying the 20ps at £50 due to their rarity, meaning if you were to find one of these coins in your pocket, you could grab yourself a game and more for 20p. It doesn’t stop there, however. If you do find a 20p coin with no date on it, get yourself onto Ebay. Yesterday, one coin sold for £7,100 as collectors scrambled to own one of the dateless pieces of silver. Demand has crept up, and one person was selling a coin for £20,000 today, although has not yet received any bids, but has received at least 21 offers.

£7,100 is 35,500 times the face value of the 20p, and if you’re looking to buy games on the shelf at roughly £40 each, that’s 177 games for 20p. So before you buy your next game, check your silver coins for a dateless 20p. It’s estimated that between 50,000 and 200,000 coins have gotten into public circulation, so there may be over £7000 sitting in your pocket right now. Make that 177 games.

Sources: BBC News , Daily Mail

Photo: Watershed/PA Wire