Shock as rare coin worth up to $300 used to pay at servo: ‘Extremely popular’

A rare $5 coin has been used to pay at a Melbourne service station but it is worth much, much more than its face value. The $5 World Heritage Coin was released by the Australian Royal Mint last year and, despite not looking like a regular coin, it is considered legal tender.

Alex Natoli and Doug Mcrostie founded their business Coinxchange a few months ago and are hoping to get the younger generation interested in coin collecting and rare coins. The Melbourne friends told Yahoo Finance they decided to try and spend one of the valuable $5 coins to see if it would be accepted.

“It is technically legal tender. But because it doesn’t say $5 on it, people don’t really know about it,” Natoli said.

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The pair shared a video of Natoli attempting to pay for a coconut water using the coloured coin at a local service station.

In the video, the worker said he had never seen the coin before but knew it was a $5 coin. He ended up researching the coin and, ultimately, said he wasn’t able to accept it.

Mcrostie said it was likely the first time someone had tried to pay with one of the rare $5 coins, given some can be worth as much as $300.

“It’s worth more to collectors if people want to buy and sell it. But technically I don’t think shops actually have to accept it but you can go to the bank and change it over because it is legal tender,” he told Yahoo Finance.

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How much are the rare $5 World Heritage coins worth?

The Mint originally released the uncirculated $5 World Heritage Coin for $30. However, its value was soon pushed up as collectors clambered to get their hands on it, with some eBay sellers flogging the coin for as much as $600.

One collector told Yahoo Finance she spent six hours trying to secure the coin, which features all 20 of Australia’s world heritage locations including the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu National Park and the Sydney Opera House.

Mcrostie said the coins currently had a market value of between $60 and $80 on the secondary market, but they could be worth more if they were graded.

“I bought a few the other day at $70. I sent off five for grading to the company in the US called PCGS and they came back graded at an MS 69, which is the second highest grade you can get,” he said.

“Their market value is about $300. If you get them graded it adds a layer of authenticity to it and then increases the value as well.”

The Mint only released 30,000 of the coins and Mcrostie said they were “extremely popular” due to their “beautiful design”.

Plans to use the rare $5 coin again

Natoli said he was partly relieved when the cashier didn’t accept the rare $5 coin.

“To be honest, leading up to it I didn’t want them to accept it because obviously it is worth more than $5,” he said.

“When he said he knew it was a $5 coin, I actually expected him to still accept it because he knew about it. Whereas I feel like if someone didn’t actually know what it was, they would definitely not accept it.”

Despite this, Natoli and Mcrostie said they planned to try and spend the coin again.

“Our idea is that we’re going to go around to different shops and see how long it takes until someone accepts it. This weekend I’m going to go and try a few different other places,” Natoli said.

It's not the first time someone has used a rare coin to purchase goods in-store. Melbourne jewellery store Micheli Jewellery accepted a rare $200 gold coin from a customer as part of their payment.

Shop owner Darren Harris said the customer didn't just get $200 off their total bill, but he instead knocked $1,100 off.

If you took that coin into a bank, they would give you $200 because it's legal tender, that's the value of the coin to the bank," he told Yahoo Finance.

"But we pay the value of the coin ... and those coins have probably gone up at least 30 per cent in the last five to six months because gold's gone up so much."

The $200 gold coins were released in 1983, with only 88,000 of the special coins produced by the Mint.

'Huge appetite' for rare coins

Mcrostie said there was a “huge appetite” for rare Aussie coins.

They share coin content on Instagram and TikTok, along with running a Facebook Group.

They have also started doing community meetups and said around 50 to 200 people have attended previous events.

“We meet so many people and engage with so many people who are getting into it,” Mcrostie said.

Natoli added: “We’re really just trying to grow the coin community and really extend people’s knowledge on these coins because we think that’s so important.”

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