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Rare £5 Note Featuring Jane Austen Art Turns Up in Scottish Christmas Card
Two of the notes are yet to be found.
Eileen Kinsella
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Like a modern day equivalent of Willy Wonka’s coveted golden ticket, another rare portrait of Jane Austen engraved on a £5 note has turned up in Scotland, according to the Guardian.
The finder, who did not wish to be identified, received the lucky £5 note in a Christmas card.
The engraving is the handiwork of specialist micro-engraver Graham Short and could be worth “tens of thousands of pounds,” according to his gallerist, Tony Huggins-Haig, who runs an eponymous gallery in Kelso. Short intended the engraving, one of only four that he placed on the transparent part of the new note, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the author’s death next year.
Each engraved note features a different quote from an Austen novel; one reads, “I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good.”
The artist, who is known for creating the “world’s smallest engraving” according to the Telegraph, reportedly spent the first Austen-engraved £5 note on a breakfast sandwich in South Wales in early December. The note was discovered a week later, and the woman who found it said she plans to give it to her granddaughter as an investment.
Short told the Guardian he “happy” that no one has sold one yet—though he apparently doesn’t mind if they cash in—and concedes he’s “terrified” of one bouncing back to him.
“When someone gives me a £5 note in my change now I always check,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be awful if it came back to me people would say it was a fix.”
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