Check Your Wallet –

You May Instantly Be £20,000 Richer

I don’t know if you have seen them yet, but there are a bunch of new and nasty fivers in circulation from across the border. They are near impossible to keep in order, difficult to count and upset vegetarians; but now there is another reason to look out for them –rather than the Scottish fiver. If you remember the Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, either the Gene wilder film or the book you read to the kids, you’ll be familiar with the concept of the “Golden ticket. Now such is circulating in the Scottish Borders. It is a micro-engraved five pound  English bank note by well known artist Graham Short.

 Jane Austen Portraits

Mr Short has placed tiny portraits of Jane Austen on four of the new plastic Bank of England £5 notes in a collaboration between Mr Short and the owner of the Tony Huggins-Haig Gallery in Kelso, in the Borders. Instead of auctioning the notes and making a guaranteed profit they decided that art would be better served by handing four of the notes out in secret.

First Note in Kelso

The first note went into circulation last month in Kelso with the idea of bringing art to the notice of a wider public- as most people never visit an art gallery in their lives. The note was spent in a local shop, and not a national chain, so it is going to be in circulation for quite some time and each time you pop to the shops with a little looking and a lot of luck, there are currently 1.6 billion five pound notes in circulation, you could be instantly richer.

Check Your Wallet

The artist’s last work was a portrait of the Queen on a pinhead which was sold for £100,000 and the bank notes are also expected to fetch another sizeable sum at auction when they are found. Now we can’t promise an instant that will change your life but we can offer some decent prices on a huge range of quality glass and gift wares. And if you find the “golden ticket” you’ll have even more to spend and save at James Pirie.

https://www.jamespirie.com/