Printing money
(www.royalmint.com)
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Commemorative fancy coins like that aren't really uncommon. I don't know about the UK but the US had plenty over the decades, and its usually a very uneven price like that because they don't really intend for it to ever get circulated and its likely to get rejected from any use anyway.
Its for people's dumb moms and grandparents to buy as a "collector's item" and put in a big display with a bunch of other stuff that won't gain any value. Shit, my own mother paid some company to send her the specific "State Quarters" as those were getting released back in the day and it was like 20$ per quarter.
Unless she got uniquely scammed, it was probably $20/roll. Which is just double face value, not 80x. The going price for those today is about $14-22/roll, with a couple of the first ones released hitting $30-40/roll.
Even sealed proof sets are < $2/coin.
It was absolutely a scam, because they stopped like half way through and she couldn't find the company anymore as it was just a TV Ad she called once years prior. It was per quarter, because it was being sold as a "collector's set" with its own special book with a spot for each one and they sent the coins all shiny in plastic cases.
You gotta remember this was as they were being released, so they weren't really in circulation very well (making them feel special), and it was also the age of "15$ shipping and handling" on everything. So it worked on a lot of people at the time.
Oh, I remember. My mother bought a roll of each.
FWIW: They did mint silver proof sets. If the ones you're talking about looked like this: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71X2h7cyjYL._SL1000_.jpg
Then they're actually 90% silver, limited run, and the price (while still too high) isn't completely retarded.
It wasn't quite as fancy as that, it was just a literal binder with the coins on each page and you were supposed to take them out of the shipping plastic and move them to the binder for display by hand.
Which if you know anything about retaining value, you know its a scam on that alone.
They still might have been that fancy high silver version but it was almost certainly still her being a fool too.
Nah. Those are in those sealed sets and come straight from the mint. If you're cracking them open (or even breaking the seal on the envelope) you've massively devalued them already.
Sounds like it really was just a scam :(
My bank gave me one of those for free, lol. I actually filled it up, and had a silver quarter in it, but long since lost in a move.
They apparently sell all kinds of "commemorative" coins at the US Mint.
Oh, lookie here: https://www.usmint.gov/comic-art-coins/
Yeah exactly. And they make a lot of these every year, yet I doubt almost anywhere here has ever just been handed back a Batman dollar in normal circulation.
Its just people paying the government to use their machines to make a neat little knickknack, so I can't even really hate the idea.
Mints gotta make money somehow, not like they're able to just make a bunch of coins whenever they want. That's reserved for paper money, and they don't even actually print it most of the time.
A government ignoring the message of 1984 and paying lip-service with a meaningless commemorative coin is very 2025.
Is it made of the same zinc pot metal like regular currency?