If you’ve got one of these rare £1 coins then it could earn you a cool £3,000

Most of the pound coins in your wallet are probably worth – wait for it – one pound.

However, on the off-chance you have a rare edition with a printing error, you could be in for a tidy payday.

While those select few fivers worth £50,000 have probably all been cashed in, you might still have a pound coin worth three grand sitting in your wallet.

Coin collector Richard Bird noticed that one of his new pounds had 2016 on one side, though the micro-inscriptions on the edges of the other side said 2017.

“It’s been confirmed that it is what I thought it was,” Bird told the Hull Daily Mail.

“The people from the Royal Mint have seen it and saw it as a genuine and are now investigating how it got into circulation.

“After it was verified I was then able to get it valued, and I was told it could be worth about £3,000.”

The Royal Mint were surprised to learn of the error, with a spokesperson saying: “These [faulty] coins were removed before they entered circulation and, therefore, we are investigating how this coin got into the public domain.”

We’ll let you quickly check your wallet to make sure you haven’t got one yourself, because we wouldn’t be able to wait if we knew there was even a 1% chance.

They’re all 2017 coins, aren’t they? Yeah, we had the same problem.

Still, we bet you won’t be chucking your spare change at any old purchase in the next few days without looking very closely. And hey, when your worst case scenario is still having a pound, it’s not all bad.

(Images: Rex Features)