Why this seemingly ordinary 5c coin in Australia is now worth $3000

An ultra rare double-headed 5c coin has been valued between $3,000 and $5,000 among collectors who are desperately looking for one of their own. 

The 2007 5c coin slipped into circulation with a major printing error before anyone realise that both sides feature the Queen's head. 

Enthusiasts have told all Australians to be on the lookout for the illusive piece after TikToker Barnes Meister found one in mint condition in his wallet.

Joel Kandiah, another coin lover from Perth, said that the error occurred when two 'head dies' were pressed into a single blank coin during production.  

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A double-headed 5cent coin from 2007 that made it into circulation has been valued between $3,000 and $5,000 depending on its condition

'When the mint sets up its press to make coins, the top of the die is the head side and the bottom is the tail side. But what happened here, is the bottom die was also the tail side so it spit out a double headed 5c coin,' Mr Kandiah told news.com.au.

Errors made by the Royal Australian Mint are very rare but when they happen collectors scour the country to find them. 

'The mint has very high-quality assurance and quality control processes so it is near impossible to find an error, you're looking at less than 0.1 per cent, if not less than that,' Mr Kandiah said.

The last time anyone found a double-headed 5c coin was in 2022 and rare items only appear on secondhand marketplaces once or twice a year. 

Right now there is only one of the coins listed on Ebay which is in a mint condition with a starting bid of $2,000.

The mint has never confirmed how many of these erroneous coins made it into circulation, so the odds of finding one might be better than expected. 

'The machines print 600 coins a minute and (the mint) try to check through all the coins and find the errors and take them out — so they might have taken a bunch of the errors out, but there's a good chance there's still a big chunk of them out there,' Mr Kandiah said.

Valuable misprint coins typically have only the slightest error in their design which is what makes them so hard to spot. 

Perth-based coin lover Joel Kandiah said that the error occurred when two 'head dies' were printed into a single blank coin during production at the Royal Australian Mint

There is only one double-headed 5cent coin on eBay at the time of writing with a starting bid of $2,000

READ MORE: $2 coin with the Queen's face on fire worth $6,000 

A bidding war has been sparked over the new $2 commemorative coins honouring Australia’s firefighters, as some feature the orange flame design on the wrong side. 

One woman from Victoria found a 20c coin with a 'wavy baseline' on the number two and discovered she could sell it for $4,000 thanks to the error. 

Typically the baseline is a solid line without any curvature. 

The mint made another error when it released a batch of 'Mule Dollar' coins - a small number of $1 coins from the year 2000 that were made using the wrong print.

The Mule dollar, which can sell for $3,000, has a double rim around the edge instead of the regular $1 coin which has one. 

Coin expert Matthew Thompson from Town Hall Coins and Collectables in Sydney said that valuable coins are still circulating because people don't check for them. 

'People don't expect institutions like the Mint to make mistakes,' he recently told Daily Mail Australia.

'But from time to time things can go awry. If you see mistakes on a coin, if you have something interesting, odd or out of place, then other people are likely to find it interesting, too - that's why people collect.'

Others are keen to inspect every coin in their change jars, which is a process called 'noodling'.

'I've done it before if I've a bag of coins or change jars. If you just spend a bit of time going through them it can certainly pay off,' he said.

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