Twenty

After twenty years married it gets more and more difficult to find something unique as a gift but this year I did manage to hit on something different thanks to a cock-up at the Royal Mint and I think some less than observant canteen staff at work.

If you look at the coin here (photographed on a sheet of glass above a mirror so you can see both sides), you'll see that it's completely date free on both sides. When the Royal Mint changed the design of these coins in 2008 there was a batch issued that had the old dateless heads side with the new dateless heads side. When they realised this they offered to buy back the mistakes at £50 each and this took some of them back out of circulation and now no-one's exactly sure how many are still out there. On Ebay just now they're still selling for around £50 although back in July 2009 one sold for £7100.

Anyway, as it's our 20th Wedding Anniversary today I taped this into a card for Samantha. I think she thought I was being a bit of a tight wad only coughing up a measly 20p for a gift, until the above was explained to her of course.

Who knows what it might be worth another twenty years down the line...?

(Just had another check on Ebay there and there's a load of chancers selling off ordinary 20p coins under the pretence that they're the same as this. And the frightening thing is, there are people bidding for them and paying over the odds for something that is worth... well... 20p!)