Coin Info
Here’s where you can find a new 12-sided £1 coin GUARANTEED!
The Royal Mint have revealed a list of places around the UK where you will be able to get a new 12-sided £1 coin on launch day guaranteed.
That will make you one of the first people to get hold of the coin before they start circulating more widely…
Here is the list of the guaranteed locations revealed by The Royal Mint:
ABERDEEN:
- CLYDESDALE 1 Queen’s Cross, AB15 4XU
EDINBURGH:
- BARCLAYS 10-15 Princes Street, EH2 2AN
- RBS 36 St Andrew Aquare, EH2 2AD
- CLYDESDALE 83 George street, EH2 3ES
- POST OFFICE 40 Frederick Street, EH2 1EY
GLASGOW:
- BANK OF SCOTLAND 167-201 Argyle Street, G2 8BU
- CLYDESDALE 30St Vincent St G1 2HL
BELFAST:
- BANK OF IRELAND 4-8 High Street, BT1 5LR
- ULSTER BANK 11-16 Donegall Square East, BT1 5UB
NEWCASTLE:
- NATWEST 16 Northumberland Street, NE1 7EL
YORK:
- POST OFFICE 22 Lendal, YO1 8DA
LEEDS:
- NATWEST Leeds City Centre 8 Park Row, LS1 5HD
- YORKSHIRE BANK 94-96 Briggate, LS1 6NP
MANCHESTER:
- BARCLAYS 86-88 Market Street, M1 1PD
- NATWEST 182 Deansgate, M3 3LY
- POST OFFICE 26 Spring Gardens, M2 1BB
- HSBC 2-4 Saint Anne’s Square, M2 7HD
LIVERPOOL:
- NATWEST 22 Castle Street, L2 0UP
BIRMINGHAM:
- LLOYDS BANK 36/38 New Street, B2 4LP
- POST OFFICE 1 Pinfold Street, B2 4AA
CARDIFF:
- BARCLAYS St Davids Centre, CF10 2DP
- LLOYDS BANK 31 Queen Street, CF10 2AG
- HSBC 15 Churchill Way, CF10 2HD
LONDON:
- BARCLAYS 2 Churchill Place, E14 5RB
- NATWEST 1 Princes Street, EC2R 8BP
- HALIFAX 33 Old Broad Street, EC2N 1HZ
- POST OFFICE 24/28 William IV Street, WC2N 4DL
- HSBC 103 Station Road, Edgeware, HA8 7J
- SANTANDER – 2 Triton Square, NW1 3AN, 164-167 Tottenham Court Road, W1T 7JE, 57 Streatham High Rd, SW16 1PN
SITTINGBOURNE:
- SANTANDER 106-108 High Street, ME10 4PP
BATH:
- POST OFFICE 27 Northgate Street, BA1 1AJ
21 tips to complete your Great One Pound Coin Race
The Race is on…
You’ve only got until 15 October to find all 24 circulating £1 coin designs. And after the new 12-sided £1 Coin is released on 28 March, it will get harder as banks start to replace the £1 coins they receive with the new 12-sided £1 coin.
So that’s why we’ve put our heads together to give you 21 Top Tips to complete your Great One Pound Coin Race in time.
- Check your change drawer / change pot
- Ask friends and family
- Go to the bank and change notes to £1 coins
- Swap with the Change Checker web app – changechecker.org
- Befriend the local corner shop / launderette owner and ask them for their £1 coins
- Arcade / bingo change machines
- Pay with a note and round up with loose change to maximise your £1 coin change
- Look for Facebook swap groups
- Raid your children’s piggy banks (and replace them with notes!)
- Look for abandoned supermarket trolleys
- Check down the back of the sofa
- Check old handbags
- Set up a lottery syndicate and collect the payments in round £1 coins
- Have a bake sale – everything a round £1 coin
- Offer to count up any collections and swap out the £1 coins for notes
- Car boot sale – everything is “One Round Pound”
- Pay car park charges in notes and receive the change in coins
- Check any tips your friends might be leaving at restaurants
- Always carry some £1 coins with you so you can swap any time you see a good one
- Check gym lockers
- Try to build a collection as a group – e.g. a school class – 30 Change Checkers are better than 1!
Win a Gold-plated Participant’s Medal
Do you have any more tips?
We’ll be giving away some special 24-Carat Gold Plated Great One Pound Coin Participant’s Medals to the best ideas. Simply comment below with your top tip.
How to enter the Great One Pound Coin Race
If you haven’t started your Great One Pound Coin Race yet, it’s not too late. Simply click here to enter today and you too could own a complete collection of £1 coins direct from your change before they’re gone for ever.
Just Discovered: Rare “Inverted Effigy” £2 Coin
It’s time to really start examining your change again.
Change Checker has just been able to confirm that a small number of “Inverted Effigy” £2 Coins have entered circulation.
The Inverted Effigy Coin has the Queen’s head rotated clockwise by approximately 150 degrees
First discovered by a Change Checker, and now confirmed as genuine by The Royal Mint, this unusual strike appears on a handful of the 2015 Britannia £2 Coins.
The Royal Mint has accounted for the seemingly impossible misalignment of the Queen’s effigy as “almost certainly the result of one of the dies working loose and rotating during the striking process”.
The result is that the Queen’s head is offset by around 150 degrees compared to the Britannia design on the reverse of the coin.
Just how rare is the Inverted Effigy £2 Britannia?
The Royal Mint is unable to give any indication of how many Inverted Effigy coins have entered circulation but we can make some initial estimates.
The first-year 2015 £2 Britannia is already one of the most-scarce circulating £2 coins ever issued with just 650,000 coins passing through banks and cash centres. That already places it third equal in the all-time low mintage charts.
We have analysed 5,000 circulation coins and our results suggest that the Inverted Effigy may have affected as few as 1 in 200 of the coins struck – in other words around just 3,250 coins.
Of course, if the Inverted Effigy is a consequence of the die slipping during the striking process, it is possible that there may be other variations where the Queen’s head is less or more misaligned as the die has worked its way out of position.
Errors, mis-strikes and myths
Of course, given the many million coins The Royal Mint strike each year, it is to their immense credit that mis-strikes and errors are so few and far between. But, of course, when they do arise, they cause great collector excitement, as some of these other examples pay testament to.
- The Undated 20p – read more
- The “Silver” 2p – read more
- The 2014 Year of the Horse Silver £2 – read more
But there are a few myths out there too – upside down edge lettering, the “Pemember” Gunpowder Plot £2 coin and the “Necklace” £2 coin, which all have perfectly normal explanations.
Buyers beware
But finally a note of caution. I’m sure in time we’ll see some “examples” of the Inverted Effigy £2 for sale online. Before you think of buying one, please beware. Are you seeing a genuine Inverted Effigy or just a coin that someone has rotated in a photograph to make it look inverted?