Is 20 pence coin blunder going the same way as 'rare' smurfs?
No sooner do we announce the 'Silly Season' has arrived, than a classic example of hype over reality arrives courtesy of just about every media outlet as they variously announced the '20 pence coin blunder'; and how anything up to 200,000 shiny 20 pence pieces could have been minted minus the date - making them 'rare'. (The Sun surely had the best headline with: '20p could be worth a mint'
Such is the uniformity of the story it looks like some cracking public relations by The London Mint (no relation to the money making Royal Mint you'll understand) offering £50 for each of the 'rare' 20 pence coins. The less often reported small print requires the people eager to cash in their coins to register first.
So with all the marvellous publicity neatly achieved, The London Mint has plenty of time to assess how many coins are available on the open market and what the demand is likely to be - before paying for any of the mis-minted coins. Can you imagine the scenario where they turn out to be so common that £50 turns into £5 or maybe even 50 pence? Not a figure that would have captured anything like the headlines achieved today.
Now to the Smurfs. As a young reporter in the late 80s/early 90s I seem to recall a front page headline, my instinct says it was the Daily Star, which reported that so rare were many of the blue skinned toy figurines that they were worth thousands of pounds... Yes, you've guessed it, within days it became clear that many more examples of the so-called 'rare' Smurfs were out there, that actually they were worth little more than their most common counterparts.
At least that time the story was just as big announcing Smurfs were not an endangered toy as had been the original screaming headline. I wonder how many of the media will report the diminished value of the 20 pence pieces? Most will have decided the story isn't worth that much!
Incidentally, courtesy of Google I discovered that today there is actually a very brisk trade in certain Smurfs. Now if only I could find my 1984 Smurfette with a baseball bat...
