A SET of faulty £5, £10 and £20 bank notes are tipped to sell for £6,000 at auction but can you spot what’s wrong with them?
The collection of erroneous British bank notes include some with the Queen’s head missing and others include a crude smudge over the monarch’s face.
The unique group of over 30 notes date between the 1950s and ’80s and display a number of irregularities.
Two £20 notes were printed with just the outline of where Queen Elizabeth II should be.
One old £1 note has a crude smudge over the monarch’s face while her head is badly faded on another irregular £10 note.
Other quirky examples that slipped through the racks of the Bank of England quality control team to make it into circulation include notes with mismatched serial numbers.
Others have also been badly mis-cut.
The notes belong to a collector who has spent several decades amassing them.
He has now decided the time is right to part with them and they have been consigned for sale with auctioneers Dix Noonan Webb of London.
They are priced between £9 and £500 and are expected to appeal to an army of dedicated collectors.
Andrew Pattison, head of banknotes at Dix Noonan Webb, said: “It is pretty difficult to find so many different ones, so this single
owner collection represents quite a time investment.
“Some of the errors are spectacular.
“In most cases, they were simply missed by the Bank of England quality control after printing and sent to distribution centres and banks as normal.
“Often, bank tellers kept them – paying face value for the note – or they were put into cash machines and kept by members of the public.
“Had they been found before they left the factory, they would have been destroyed for sure.
“We know from talking to several people who used to work for the printing works that in some cases, tens of thousands of notes would have shot through the press before anyone noticed they were faulty.
“Thankfully the modern methods of printing on polymer have eliminated all accidents and not a single genuine error has been observed on the new £5, £10 and £20 notes.”
Overall there are 32 notes being offered with a combined estimate of £6,000.
The sale takes place on June 24.
