THE rare Sherlock Holmes 50p completes the coin collection of any British detective fan.And it’s not an uncommon design to pop up in your change either.
1The rare 50p coin completes the collection of any British detective fan
The coin was released into circulation in 2019 on what would have been the 160th birthday of Arthur Conan Doyle’s, the author who created Sherlock Holmes.
The writer is best known for his popular detective stories, so what better way to commemorate the author’s most famed work than with a coin of the character and book titles to match.
The 50p coin was designed by Stephen Raw and features the profile of the fictional detective, who’s wearing his iconic deerstalker hat and smoking pipe.
It’s also got tiny inscriptions of the titles of books in the Sherlock Holmes series behind the silhouette too.
The obverse features the fifth portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, designed by Royal Mint engraver Jody Clark, as is standard with all modern 50ps.
But while the design is different to your regular 50p, we take a look at exactly how much it’s worth, and whether the coin is as rare as you think.
How rare is the Sherlock Holmes 50p?
In short, the Sherlock Holmes 50p isn’t very rare.
According to Change Checker the Sherlock Holmes 50p has a circulating mintage of 8,602,000.
That’s means there are almost 8.4 million more knocking about than the official rarest 50p coin, the Kew Gardens 50p.
It’s only got a scarcity score of one on Change Checker’s latest index.
The scarcity index ranks each of the coins between 1 and 100 to indicate how hard they are to find, as well as how in demand they may be.
The higher the number, the scarcer the coin and therefore it’s more likely to be more valuable than others.
So, coming in at 65th place on the November update, the Sherlock Holmes 50p certainly isn’t a top scorer.
How much is the Sherlock Holmes 50p worth?
Sadly, as the rare coin isn’t in fact that rare, it doesn’t hold much resale value.
One circulated copy of the coin has only sold for £1.85 on eBay – and that’s the highest The Sun has found recently.
While that does make it almost four times more valuable than its face value, it’s not as much as we have seen more popular rare coins go for on the online auction site.
But when you’re buying and selling on eBay you have to keep in mind all those hidden charges too, so when you add up sellers fees and postage, to name a few, you might only earn as much as 50p back from your …
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