New £5 notes selling for nearly £800 on eBay

Collectors have realised that £5 that have come off the first press could be worth a small fortune

If you have a new £5 note, it may be worth checking its serial number (eBay)

The new plastic £5 notes, which entered circulation last week, are selling for more than 160 times their face value on eBay.

People are putting up the new polymer note for up to £800 on the auction site.

As the Bank of England’s first ever plastic note, collectors have realised that those that have come off the first press could be worth a small fortune.

Collectors are looking for notes with a serial number starting AA01 and ideally followed by a low six-digital serial numbers.

The Queen was presented with the first note leaving a further 999,998 fivers bearing the AA01 prefix.

If you have a new £5 note, it may be worth checking its serial number.

There are 440 million new fivers printed but not all of them have made it into circulation yet, so it’s possible that lower-numbered notes may still appear in cash machines.

People are also donating their first plastic £5 notes to charity as part of a social media campaign.

(eBay)

Although, someone has yet to make a bid on the note listed at £800, another fiver with one of the sought after serial number had reached £400 on eBay this morning.

The new notes fit in cash machines like paper ones, but are considerably more durable, cleaner and harder to counterfeit.

Each note is expected to last about five years – two and a half times longer than their paper counterparts – because of the durability of the polymer material.

In April, the Bank of England unveiled the design of a new £20 featuring the artist JMW Turner and his painting “The Fighting Temeraire” that will enter into circulation in 2020.

Two million £5 notes made of polymer plastic were released by the Clydesdale Bank, the largest issuer by volume of notes in Scotland, in March.