New King Charles £10 banknote sells for £17k due to specific detail - what to look for

The New kIng Charles banknotes entered circulation this month

A new King Charles III £10 banknote sold for £17,000 at a Bank of England charity auction event yesterday afternoon.

The auction, held by Spink & Son on behalf of the Bank of England, had 262 lots of new £10 notes featuring King Charles III. The auction of £5 notes was on June 13, while the £10 note auction took place June 27.

The very first banknotes to feature an image of King were released earlier this month on June 5 and the ones that display a certain serial number are of particular value to collectors. Every banknote features its unique serial number to identify and date it with a four-digit prefix and you can find these numbers on the bottom right-hand corner of each note. For each prefix, there are 999,000 notes printed and put into circulation - from 000001 to 999000. The Bank of England revealed in April that the four lowest serial numbers for each of the new King Charles notes and were:

• £5: CA 01 000001
• £10: HB 01 000001
• £20: EH 01 000001
• £50: AJ 01 000001

However, you will not be able to get your hands on these specific ones, this is because they are in the hands of King Charles himself. Yesterday the lot featuring the HB01 000002 £10 note was auctioned and received a frenzied bidding war both online and in the the room. The note eventually was sold to a buyer over the phone for £17,000. The next lot, which featured a £10 note with serial number HB01 000003, sold for £5,500 and lot three, HB01 000004 sold for £2,400.

Auctioneers Spink and Son said traditionally the £10 note with the serial number HB01 000002 is reserved for the Consort of the Sovereign. However, this was the first time it was made available to buy for private collectors. The auction of new £20 notes will take place on July 11 and an auction of new £50 notes will take place on July 25. You can find more details about the auctions via the auctioneer's website here.

As the new notes enter circulation, you may want to keep an eye out on the prefixes and serial numbers. The experts say that to get any serial number below 20 is exceptionally rare. Arnas Savickas, head of banknotes at auctioneers Spink and Son said: "Depending on the serial number of the note - it's reasonable to assume that the lowest serial number of a £5 could fetch between £250 to £500, while £10 and £20 notes could go for £500 and £1,000 respectively.

"A £50 then could go for several thousand pounds. It's not impossible that outside of the auction, someone could find notes with a serial number within the first million. Outside of the auction, someone could potentially find a note with a serial number as low as six figures - you could probably get one with 100000."