During the summer of 2024, Spink & Sons held four charity auctions offering low numbers and uncut sheets of the new King Charles III polymer £5, £10, £20 and £50 banknotes on June 13, June 27, July 11 and July 24, 2024 respectively.
In addition to these auctions, 549 sets of first prefix, matching serial numbers (ranging between 002102 and 002944) were offered in a lottery-style ballot. One had about a 1 in 3 chance of winning a set in the lottery, where one set cost £127.50 plus postage costs, where applicable.
According to the Bank of England's recent press release, the four auctions raised £890,795 and the ballot lottery raised £23,332, for a total of £914,127 to benefit ten charities. These include the Bank's three current "charities of the year" as well as an additional seven previous charities of the year that had not benefited from the proceeds of a charity polymer banknote auction held since 2016. The current three charities of the year are The Childhood Trust, The Trussell Trust, and Shout (powered by the charity, Mental Health Innovations). The other charities to have benefited from these 2024 auctions and the ballot are: Carers UK, Demelza, WWF-UK, The Brain Tumour Charity, London's Air Ambulance Charity, Child Bereavement UK, and Samaritans.
One charity auction broke the record for the highest lot sold in a Bank of England banknote auction with an uncut sheet of forty £50 banknotes (serial numbers AJ01 713002 - AJ40 713002) that sold for £26,000. This was followed by the £10 charity auction where a single note sold for £17,000 (serial number HB01 00002).
The King Charles III banknotes are a continuation of the current series, and, as such, the serial numbers commence from the next available cypher (prefix), following those previously used for the production of notes featuring Queen Elizabeth II. The first cyphers (prefixes) for the King Charles III banknotes are:
- £5: CA
- £10: HB
- £20: EH
- £50: AJ
The lowest serial numbers offered in the charity auctions sold for these prices:
- £5 (CA01 000003): £11,000
- £10 (HB01 000002): £17,000
- £20 (EH01 000002): £7,000
- £50 (AJ01 000003): £14,000
Matching serial number sets were offered both in the final charity auction and also in the ballot lottery. A matching set with serial number 002030 sold in the charity auction for £3,800. Set 002088 sold for £1500, set 002100 sold for £1200, set 002101 sold for £950, whereas set 002102 and 548 others sold via ballot for £127.50.
Collectors usually want a matching set of serial numbers, which was not possible for many serial numbers this time. For example, serial number 000071 was offered for the £5 (but grouped together with 69 and 70 in one lot), the £10 (offered alone in one lot), the £20 (offered along in one lot), but was not offered for the £50 banknote. This is one example of many, which frustrated numerous collectors, many of whom boycotted the auctions altogether. I hope that Spink and the Bank of England will learn from their mistakes this time and offer the same serial numbers for all denominations and group the notes together (or not) in the same way in each auction. This was done correctly for the four Queen Elizabeth II charity auctions. But the problems notwithstanding, the banknotes did sell well. So who bought all these banknotes at such prices? It was reported that in the Queen Elizabeth II charity auctions, the majority of bidders were NOT collectors. And it appears that this was also the case for the King Charles III charity auctions. No printed catalogs were produced for any of the auctions, unlike for the Queen Elizabeth II charity auctions.
The new King Charles III banknotes are being printed on both Guardian™ by CCL Secure and Safeguard® by De La Rue. Of the banknotes issued into circulation so far, the £5 and £50 have been printed on Guardian™ and the £10 and £20 on Safeguard®.
