LEFT: Mule, RIGHT: Not-a-Mule
The media and the public embraced our article from last week about the dollar coin you can find in your pocket that could be worth $1,000! This has sent people into a frenzy checking jars of coins, money boxes, spare change in the top drawer and coins in their pockets. Sellers have rushed to eBay listing up the 2000 dated dollar coins without having really grasped the crux of the story. I guess they heard “valuable coin…….la la la……2000 dollar….la la la” because eBay is awash with year 2000 Mob of ‘roos dollars being sold as mules that are regular standard dollar coins worth face value of a dollar. Be careful buyers if you are headed to eBay to add this mule to your collection that the coin you are purchasing is really a true mule coin.
The nationwide awareness has empowered people to find these wrongly minted mule coins in their wallets and pockets which has brought many questions to the Australian Coin Collecting Blog over the past few days. It’s sent us to radio and had our Blog shared to thousands of new visitors via news.com.au, The Daily Mail,Huffington Post and nine.com.au just to name a few. Many newly found valuable dollars have found their way onto eBay with people reaping the valuable profits from the dollar in their pockets straight away! One collector found a mule just a few days ago and here it is:
……just read this article about mules, got all exited and noodled away till I found this, is it a mule……it was pretty exciting, ive collected coins since I was 9 so over 20 years, it was just as exiting as my first coin, a penny in an old wrecked holden….
2000 $1/10c Mule
Checking eBay today and it’s clear that, as a buyer, you need to be able to identify the mule coin if you intend to purchase one. If you’re a seller of a “found coin” then it’s clear that some of you didn’t read the fine print either. Of the 8 top listed coins found when I searched for “2000 mule” in the coin category and viewed them in lowest price first, 3 coins are not mules and 5 are genuine mule error coins. We even have a year 2000 10c coin described as “(MULE ???)” that’s been bid up to $51 for a coin worth 10 cents! Another (what we call not-a-mule) 2000 dollar that’s clearly a standard coin has also been bid up to $117.50. If you’re going to eBay to buy a mule be sure that you look out for the distinctive double rim and don’t be fooled just because the seller tells you it’s a mule.
eBay search for “2000 mule” for sale 15/3/2017
