A rare coin from the 1980s is worth more money than its 50 cent value

A rare 50 cent coin from the 1980s is worth 80 times its value because only a small number were ever minted. In 1985, only one million 50 cent coins were ever produced, which now sees them fetch anywhere between $15 and $40, according to numismatist Michael McCauley. Mr McCauley shared a Tik Tok where he said the same number of coins were minted in 1993, but they weren’t worth as much as the coins produced a decade earlier. “I tend to find the 1985s are harder to find and I think that is because they are a bit older and probably more have been taken out of circulation for collections,” he said. “Some of them might have also been lost along the way or damaged.” Mr McCauley said damaged coins were usually sent back to the Mint for destruction. But if you were lucky enough to find 50 cent coins with particular defects, he said they could be worth even more selling anywhere from $20 to $250. Mr McCauley said these coins had specific defect lines on the coins that made them more valuable to collectors. He said some 50 cent coins there were minted in 2010 were also highly prized because they had a “rotated” queen on the back, where her nose pointed towards nine o’clock. “The price range on those is $40 to $70,” Mr McCauley said.