This 1p coin from 1952 is expected to fetch £200,000 at auction

Coin collecting is a hugely popular hobby, and if you are lucky enough to come into ownership of a sought-after coin you could be sitting on a small fortune.

A rare 1p coin from 1952 could sell for up to £200,000 at auction.

The proof penny is the rarest of the entire series of copper and bronze pennies, TikTok account @CoinCollectingWizard explained.

The existence of the unique coin was not known publicly until it appeared at auction in October 1997.

People were astonished to see the coin as it was not known to exist in proof quality.

The coin remains an enigma as the only unique striking of a pre-decimal penny from the 20th century.

It is perhaps understandable as George VI, who features on the coin, died early in 1952.

The coin will go up for auction and is estimated to reach £200,000, if not more.

The alert comes after a rare 50p coin sold for almost 1,000 times its face value at auction this week.

The coin, a Kew Gardens 250th anniversary coin, sold for £490 on eBay.

It is one of the Royal Mint’s rarest and most valuable coins, with just 210,000 copies entering circulation when it was released in 2009.

As a result, it is one of the most sought-after coins by collectors in the UK.

The coin features the Chinese Pagoda at the Royal Botanic Gardens on the tails side and a portrait of the Queen.

After being listed on online auction site eBay, the 50p coin attracted 4 bids before selling for £490.

Rarest 50p coins in circulation the UK?

The rarest is the Kew’s Garden 50p, which was designed to mark the 250th anniversary of the gardens in 2009. Only 210,000 coins were ever minted with this design.

The Kew Gardens 50p sells for £156.25 on average, but one seller received over £700 for one when they sold it on eBay.

The other rarest coins stem predominantly from the 2011 Olympics, with the wrestling, football and judo coins among the most valuable. Only 1.1million of each of these coins were produced.

Flopsy bunny and Peter Rabbit designs which were produced in 2018 are also highly valuable.

These coins - 1.4 million of which were minted - depict the characters from Beatrix Potter’s novels and these sell for around £5.

In 2019, 500 million coins were produced, with three new 50p designs.

These included one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Paddington Bear at St Paul's Cathedral and the Tower of London.