CASH IN THE ATTIC: The pennies worth hundreds of thousands of pounds

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CASH IN THE ATTIC: The pennies worth hundreds of thousands of pounds

By Toby Walne for The Mail on Sunday

Published: | Updated:

Every week we give the low-down on the value of forgotten treasures that may be gathering dust at home.

An old copper One Penny coin sold for £111,000 last week – a 1937 rarity minted for the reign of King Edward VIII. 

The coin, below, is worth so much money because only a handful was ever produced to mark this future coronation. But Edward abdicated in December 1936 to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

An old copper One Penny coin sold for £111,000 last week – a 1937 rarity minted for the reign of King Edward VIII

Another rarity is the One Penny minted during the reign of King George V in 1933. Only seven were produced that year as there were already enough on the market. One sold for £72,000 in 2016.

If you have come across one of the first batch of New Penny pieces produced in 1971 for decimalisation it might be worth as much as £50. Although 1.5billion of these 1p coins were struck with a 1971 date, few have survived the ravages of time.

In 1992, the make-up of the 1p copper coins was changed and they started to be produced using copper-plated steel instead of the old bronze.

But before this happened 78,000 original bronze coins were made for 1992. 

These earlier rare pieces look just like the 250million copper-plated steel 1p coins later produced in 1992. 

They can only be spotted because they cannot be picked up using a magnet and are worth up to £400 each.

 

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