Guide

Coin Checker: Identify, Grade and Value Any British Coin Free

The free UK coin checker: a structured walk-through for valuing any British coin, identify it, grade it, look up the realised auction price for that grade, decide whether to authenticate or sell. Every figure cited on MyCoinage is a hammer price from a published auction archive or a verified eBay sold listing, not dealer asking prices.

Last updated: 5 September 2026
In brief. Five-step coin valuation: (1) identify denomination, year, monarch and any mintmark; (2) grade on the UK descriptive scale (Poor → FDC) or Sheldon 1–70; (3) look up the realised auction price for that exact (coin, grade) combination; (4) authenticate if the coin is worth more than £200 (PCGS, NGC or CGS UK); (5) sell via the right venue for the value tier (eBay below £500, auction house above). Most British coins in change are worth face value; the genuinely valuable ones are listed in our rare UK coins list and errors list.

Step 1: Identify your coin

Before you can value a coin you need to know which coin it is. The five pieces of information that uniquely identify almost any British coin:

  1. Denomination (face value): 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1, £2, £5, sovereign, half sovereign, etc. Usually obvious from the size, shape and inscription.
  2. Year of issue: on the obverse below the bust (post-2008 designs) or on the reverse (pre-2008). Pre-decimal pennies sometimes carry the date in the legend rather than as a numeral.
  3. Monarch: identifies the era and portrait variant. Modern: Elizabeth II (4 different portraits 1953–2022) or Charles III (2023+). Pre-1953: George VI, George V, Edward VII, Victoria (3 portraits), William IV, George IV, George III, etc.
  4. Mintmark: a small letter on the reverse identifying which mint struck the coin. London is unmarked; branches use S (Sydney), M (Melbourne), P (Perth), I (Bombay), SA (Pretoria), C (Ottawa). Critically affects sovereign value.
  5. Variety: minor design differences within a year (different obverse portraits, edge inscriptions, error variants). On the catalogue page each documented variety is a separate entry.

Use our catalogue search with any combination of those five fields. Or work through the structured UK coin identifier, which steps through identification one decision at a time.

Step 2: Grade your coin

Grade is the single biggest determinant of value. The same coin in Fine and PR-65 grades can differ by a factor of 50 or 100. Two scales are in active use:

UK descriptive scale

From worst to best:

  • Poor (P): Barely identifiable. Date may be missing.
  • Fair (FR): Major design elements visible but heavily worn.
  • About Good (AG): Heavy wear; legend partially worn through.
  • Good (G): Heavy wear; design and legend visible but faint.
  • Very Good (VG): Well worn but main features clear.
  • Fine (F): Moderate even wear; detail still sharp on main features.
  • Very Fine (VF): Light to moderate wear; high points smooth, design crisp.
  • Extremely Fine (EF): Very light wear on highest points only.
  • almost Uncirculated (aUNC): Slight friction on high points; lustre present.
  • Uncirculated (UNC): No wear, full mint lustre, possible bag marks.
  • Brilliant Uncirculated (BU): No wear, full lustre, minimal marks.
  • Fleur de Coin (FDC): Perfect proof or near-perfect specimen.

Sheldon scale (US, increasingly used internationally)

Numeric 1–70 where Poor=1, Fair=2–3, AG=3, G=4–6, VG=8–10, F=12–15, VF=20–35, EF=40–45, AU=50–58 (almost uncirculated tier), MS=60–70 (mint state, business strikes), PR=60–70 (proof). Anything 65 or above is "gem" grade. 70 is theoretically perfect, achievable on modern proofs and BU issues, vanishingly rare on older circulating coins.

The full grading guide has photographs of each grade with the wear patterns to look for, plus a UK–Sheldon crossover table.

Step 3: Look up the realised price

Open the coin's catalogue page. The grade table shows the realised price per grade, sourced from our auction-data pipeline. Headlines you'll see:

  • Latest sale price for each grade.
  • 30-day percentage change showing whether prices are trending up or down.
  • All-time price range showing the lowest and highest realised sales for the coin/grade.
  • Sample count, how many verified sales we have for that exact (coin, grade). High counts (10+) mean a reliable price; low counts (1–3) mean the figure is more indicative than authoritative.
  • Liquidity score, rolling 12-month sale frequency. High score means the coin actually trades; low score means the published value is theoretical and you may wait years to find a buyer at it.

For coins missing same-grade data, our system falls back to the all-time average for that exact grade, and only as a last resort to a cross-grade weighted average. Each coin page makes the data source explicit.

Step 4: Authenticate (for higher-value coins)

For any coin you believe is worth £200+, third-party authentication is worth the fee:

  • CGS UK, British grading service. Lower fees, faster domestic turnaround. Recognised by UK auction houses.
  • NGC UK, American Numismatic Guaranty Company\'s UK office. Strong on UK coverage; direct UK submission.
  • PCGS, American, world\'s largest grading service. Premium pricing but the strongest international slab brand.

Fees: typically £25–£50 per coin depending on declared value. A slabbed coin realises 10–25% more than the same coin raw because the buyer trusts the grade and authentication. For exceptionally rare coins (1933 penny, 1819 sovereign, Una and the Lion), slabbing is essentially mandatory, nobody pays five or six figures for a raw coin without third-party verification.

Step 5: Sell via the right venue

Coin value tierRight venueNet return notes
Under £100eBay UK or local coin fairSlabbing rarely cost-effective at this tier
£100–£500eBay UK with third-party-graded slabSlab adds ~30–50% to realised price by removing counterfeit risk
£500–£5,000UK auction house (slabbed)Hammer commission ~15–20%; net usually beats private dealer offers
£5,000+Specialist consignment (Spink, Baldwin\'s, Noonans, Heritage)Realised prices on rare dates reliably exceed private offers; slab mandatory

The where to sell rare coins guide has commission structures, net-return calculations and dealer recommendations per tier.

Worked examples: three real-world value lookups

Example 1: A 2009 Kew Gardens 50p found in change

  1. Identify: 50p (heptagonal), 2009, Royal Shield with pagoda design = Kew Gardens 50p, Royal Mint reverse design by Christopher Le Brun. Mintage: 210,000.
  2. Grade: normal-handling circulated condition = VF (likely some bag marks but full design clear).
  3. Look up: our catalogue page for the 2009 Kew Gardens 50p shows VF realised prices around £100–£130; UNC at £150–£200; PR-65 (slabbed silver proof, different issue) at £300+.
  4. Authenticate: for a single VF specimen, no, not worth a slab fee. For a high-grade UNC find, yes, CGS UK at ~£25 will lift sale price by £30–£50.
  5. Sell: eBay UK with raw photographs and a reference to mintage data is the standard route. Expect £120–£160 net.

Example 2: An inherited Victorian sovereign

  1. Identify: 22 mm gold coin, Queen Victoria portrait, year 1880 visible on reverse below St George. Check below the design for a mintmark (S, M etc); none = London. So: 1880 London Victoria sovereign, Young Head shield reverse.
  2. Grade: light wear on high points of the queen's hair = VF.
  3. Look up: catalogue page shows VF 1880 London Young Head shield at £500–£700 (mostly bullion plus modest premium). The same coin in PR-65 would be £3,000+.
  4. Authenticate: at this value, marginal. If selling to a bullion dealer no slab needed. If selling at auction, slabbing is recommended. CGS UK or NGC at £30–£50.
  5. Sell: bullion dealer (BullionByPost, Atkinsons, Chards) for the bullion-grade VF; auction house (Spink, Baldwin\'s) if slabbed and you want to capture any numismatic premium. Bullion route is faster; auction route may net 5–10% more.

Example 3: Suspected 1933 penny found in a coin album

  1. Identify: a copper penny, George V "small head" portrait, date appearing to read 1933.
  2. Grade: almost irrelevant, if genuine, the coin is worth £70,000+ in any grade.
  3. Look up: the 1933 penny guide covers known specimens, locations and authentication.
  4. Authenticate: mandatory. Fakes vastly outnumber genuine specimens. Send to PCGS or NGC immediately; do not handle the surfaces; do not clean.
  5. Sell (only if authenticated): through Spink, Baldwin\'s, Noonans or Heritage. Hammer prices at recent auctions: £72,000 (Heritage 2020), £72,500 (Spink 2016).

Use eBay sold listings as a price sanity-check

The links below open eBay UK searches; if you buy through them, MyCoinage earns a small commission at no cost to you. The "sold" filter is the single most useful free price reference for British coins.

Once you've identified and graded a coin, the cheapest sanity-check is to look up recent sold listings on eBay UK, not active asks, which mean nothing until a buyer agrees. The links below pre-filter eBay to the sold/completed view (sorted newest first) for common British coin categories. They're a free supplement to our catalogue's realised-price data; the catalogue is more comprehensive, but eBay sold listings are useful for low-population coins where our auction-house pipeline doesn't have many samples yet.

Rare 50p sold ↗ Rare £2 sold ↗ Rare £1 sold ↗ UK coins PCGS-slabbed (sold) ↗ UK coins NGC-slabbed (sold) ↗ UK coins CGS-slabbed (sold) ↗ Victorian sovereigns sold ↗ UK error coins sold ↗ Charles III 50p (BIN) ↗ British coin collection lots ↗

Reading eBay sold prices. Sort by most recent not highest price: you want the median, not the cherry-picked outlier. Discard any sale where the listing photos look different from yours (different grade, different variety) and any sale under £1 (best-offer accepted at a token to clear unsold stock). Three to five comparable sales gives you a usable price band; one sale alone tells you very little.

Frequently asked questions

How does MyCoinage's coin value checker work?
Type a coin name, denomination or year into our coin search. Every coin has a detail page showing grade-by-grade realised prices (what specimens actually sold for at auction), a price-over-time chart and current market value. Data is aggregated from eBay UK sold listings, Spink, Baldwin's, Noonans, Heritage Auctions and Onebid. Asking prices and active listings are filtered out at the data-pipeline level.
Is the service free?
Yes for the basics. Browsing the catalogue, looking up values, viewing the latest realised price per grade, and tracking up to 25 coins in a collection is free, no card required. A free MyCoinage account unlocks unlimited collection tracking, the full per-sale price-history graph on every coin, watchlist alerts and insurance-grade PDF exports. No card.
What's the difference between "asking price" and "realised price"?
Asking prices are what sellers hope to get. Realised prices are what a coin actually sold for at auction or eBay completion. The two can differ by 30–60% on rare-date coins. Most online "coin value" sites publish dealer asking prices because they're easier to scrape; we built the data pipeline specifically to publish realised prices because they reflect what the market will actually pay. For a coin you intend to sell, only realised prices matter.
How do I grade my coin?
Coins are graded on scales from Poor (worn smooth, barely identifiable) to FDC / Brilliant Uncirculated (full mint lustre, no wear). UK descriptive grades: Poor, Fair, AG, G, VG, F, VF, EF, aUNC, UNC, BU, FDC. American Sheldon scale: 1–70 numeric, where 1 is Poor and 70 is theoretically perfect. Most modern UK collectors use both interchangeably. Our coin grading guide walks through each grade with the inspection zones to look at and the wear patterns to expect at each tier.
Should I pay for professional grading?
For any coin you believe is worth £200+, third-party grading from PCGS, NGC or CGS UK is usually worth the £25–£50 fee. A graded slab commands a 10–25% price premium over a raw coin, removes counterfeit risk for the buyer, and dramatically improves auction realisations on rare dates. For anything under £100 the grading fee exceeds the value uplift; just grade informally yourself.
What information do I need to identify my coin?
Five things will identify nearly any British coin: (1) denomination (50p, £1, sovereign etc), usually obvious from face value or design; (2) year, on either obverse or reverse; (3) monarch, portrait gives this away (Victoria Young Head, Edward VII, George V, etc); (4) mintmark if any (small letter on reverse, e.g. S for Sydney, M for Melbourne, P for Perth); (5) condition / grade. With those five pieces of information our catalogue search will match the coin to a specific entry.
Why are there so many different prices for the same coin?
Three reasons. (1) Grade matters massively. A 1930 penny in Fine condition trades at £5; the same coin in PR-65 trades at £200. (2) Variety / mintmark matters. Many coins have minor varieties (different obverse portraits, edge inscriptions, mintmarks) that command different prices. (3) Authentication adds premium. A slabbed PCGS or NGC graded coin sells for 10–25% more than the same coin raw. For each coin we publish a per-grade price table so you can match your coin to the right tier.
Are old coins always worth more?
No. Age alone doesn't drive value, rarity, demand and condition do. A common worn Victorian penny (mintage 50 million+, heavily circulated) is worth £2–£5. A modern 2009 Kew Gardens 50p (mintage 210,000, only 16 years old) is worth £100–£200. The factors that drive coin value are covered in our what makes a coin rare guide.
How much is a 1971 New Pence coin worth?
Most 1971 New Pence coins (the first decimal coinage) are worth face value. The exception is the 1971 New Pence on a wrong planchet (e.g. a 2p design struck on a halfpenny blank), which is a true error and trades at £500–£2,000 if authenticated. The much more famous 1983 "New Pence" 2p, a die mismatch where the 1983 proof coin was struck with the obsolete "NEW PENCE" reverse instead of "TWO PENCE", trades at £500–£1,500 for genuine specimens.
How much is a £2 commemorative coin worth?
The vast majority of £2 commemorative coins trade at £5–£15, with a few notable exceptions. The 2002 Commonwealth Games £2 Northern Ireland (mintage 485,500) is the rarest circulating £2 and sells for £30–£60; the Wales (588,500) and Scotland (771,750) variants are also collectable at £15–£35. Full coverage on our £2 coin values guide.
Can MyCoinage value a coin I can't identify?
If you can describe the coin (denomination + year + monarch portrait, plus a photograph if you have one) we can usually find it in the catalogue. The UK coin identifier walks through identification step by step. For coins not currently in our catalogue you can submit a request from the search page; an editor reviews and adds the coin within a few days.
Should I clean my coin before checking its value?
No, never. Cleaning a coin destroys most of its numismatic value. Patina, lustre and original surfaces are part of the grade. Any abrasive or chemical cleaning leaves microscratches that grading services (PCGS, NGC) will detect and assign a "Cleaned" details grade to, which can halve the realisable price. The only acceptable handling is a careful warm-water-and-mild-soap rinse to remove loose surface dirt; nothing more.

Resources and further reading

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Reviewed by Connor Jones, Editor. Every MyCoinage guide is fact-checked against realised auction sales before publication.
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