And finally…defective £2 coins could be chance to cash in

The Royal Mint has confirmed that there are a clutch of £2 coins currently in circulation bearing a slight defect that could have to collectors swooning.

Experts at website Change Checker estimate that roughly 1 in 200 of the 650,000 £2 coins struck in 2015 have the Queen’s effigy at the wrong angle.

The experts believe there should only be fewer than 3,500 such coins now changing hands.

On the cash in question, the Queen’s head is offset by around 150 degrees compared to the Britannia design on the reverse of the coin.

While the Royal Mint said it could not confirm exactly how many coins were effected, it did speculate that the misalignment of the Queen’s head was “almost certainly a result of one of the dies working loose and rotating during the striking process.”

The Mint’s uncertainty means Change Checker’s figure can only be taken as an estimate.

The £2 Britannia coin is already one of the most scarce circulating £2 coins ever minted – it is third equal in the all-time low mintage charts.

Yasmin Britton of Change Checker said: “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.”

While Change Checker said it was too early to gauge how much the rare, defective Britannia coin is likely to be worth as none have as yet come up for sale, but said that they expected a “substantial premium”.

Errors on coins make them valuable because of the few mistakes the Royal Mint makes when minting millions of coins each year.

However, one mis-strike example includes a 2p with a mistake dating back to 1983 which can fetch more than £700.