Elderly woman finds £5 note worth £50,000, donates the money to young people
Finding out that the fiver in your wallet is worth thousands of pounds is a dream-come-true for some -- but not everyone.
A Northern Irish woman who discovered a rare £5 note worth £50,000 ($62,317) has given the note to charity because she says she has no use for the money.
The note is one of just four ultra-rare notes worth £50,000 in circulation in the UK. The note -- which is engraved with a special Jane Austen inscription -- is the third one to be snapped up, leaving just one left.
The woman who discovered the note contacted the gallery founded by Graham Short -- the artist who engraved the notes -- stating her wish to donate the note to charity.
"£5 note enclosed, I don't need it at my time of life. Please use it to help young people," reads the letter sent to the gallery by the donor, who prefers to remain anonymous.
"The lady who found the note has surprised us all by sending it to the gallery and asking that it be used to help young people," reads a blog post on Short's website. According to the post, the proceeds from the note will be donated to children's charity Children in Need. "Currently contacting outlets connected to Children in Need to try and give this to a good cause so we honour the request of the lucky woman who originally discovered the note," the post continues.
Topics Social Good
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
