Rare £10 banknotes: how to spot a valuable old tenner

With the old paper £10 set to disappear in the coming weeks, Emma Woollacott asks whether there are any worth keeping an eye out for.

With the arrival of the new polymer £10 note in September last year, the old paper ones are gradually being withdrawn from circulation.

They'll stop being legal tender after 1 March, although the Bank of England and many high street banks will allow you to exchange them after that.

Rare £10 notes: does your new ‘plastic’ Jane Austen tenner have a valuable serial number?

Ditching the old tenner

But should you be rushing to get rid of all your paper £10 notes before the deadline or could some of them have some value for collectors?

In most cases, the answer is no, says Thomasina Smith, a banknote specialist at auction house Spink & Son. Unless you're prepared to wait a while, that is.

"A lot of people still have them – they're generally not really worth more than their face value," she says.

"However, that's not to say that in 20 years' time that people won't be interested, because they will – notes from 20 years ago are valuable."

There are very occasional exceptions, with some recent paper £10 notes already worth good money. Last summer, an old £10 note featuring Charles Darwin was put up for auction on eBay with a price tag of £1,500.

In this case, the reason for the high asking price was the unusual serial number: EB11 111111.

In other cases, collectors will have an interest in particular notes for reasons that are impossible to predict – because the serial number begins with the person's initials, for example.

Valuable notes are really, really old

The truth is that the majority of paper £10 notes put up for sale on eBay make very little more than their face value.

Current examples up for sale are attracting top bids of, well, around the £10 mark. Every now and again, one that's in perfect condition might make an extra seven or eight quid at most.

Of course, the older paper £10 notes are worth rather more. As Smith has pointed out, these are pretty collectable, with a pair of uncirculated 1971 notes having just sold on eBay at £59.26 for the pair.

These notes are of a noticeably different design to the more recent paper £10 notes: most of the writing is a good deal larger and the Queen, of course, looks rather younger.

They went out of circulation many years ago, and you're very unlikely to have one tucked away in your purse (although the pockets of your oldest coats may be a different matter).

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Could my 'newer' old £10 be worth anything?

When it comes to the more recent £10 notes, which feature Charles Darwin, they'll need to have something a bit special about them to be worth any more than their face value.

In some cases, for example, runs of notes with consecutive numbers in perfect condition can be worth quite a bit extra.

And errors will always bump up the price of a banknote.

"We see errors now and again. Some are printing errors, for example where the paper has creased and you're missing some ink," says Smith.

"In other cases, it's a processing error, like the note being smudged or something having got onto it during the printing."

Some old paper £10 notes, like the one that sold last year, may be worth more than their face value because of their date of printing – as long as they're still in perfect nick.

"What collectors really look for is the condition of the note and their scarcity," says Smith.

"What they want is first runs, last runs and interesting serial numbers such as 11111111. First runs are pretty obvious because of the prefix."

With the old paper £10 note still in circulation, though, the serial numbers for the last run are still a complete mystery.

"The Bank never gives out this information, so it's up to the enthusiast to find out for themselves," says Smith.

"They probably have an idea; some people can guess. For example, with the £20 note, they think the latest is JH80. For the old £10 note, the last run is something no-one knows yet; they're all still trying to find out."

Rumour has it that collectors are expecting the serial number of the last run to begin with 'ME40', or thereabouts. It can't be anything lower, but it may be worth keeping any with this prefix – definitely, anything beginning 'ME' but with a higher number.

And if the gamble doesn't pay off, there's always the chance to make a profit at some time in the future. You never know, you might find that your grandchildren thank you one day.

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