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Harry Kane £5 note potentially worth £50,000 to be spent in Northern Ireland
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Harry Kane £5 note potentially worth £50,000 to be spent in Northern Ireland

RARE £5 notes featuring a miniature engraving of England striker Harry Kane could be worth up to £50,000.

And shoppers in Northern Ireland could find one in their change after the man behind the notes pledged to spend one there.

Artist Graham Short has engraved six Bank of England polymer fivers with an image of the striker.

One of the notes with Harry Kane's image engraved on it (Image: Graham Short)

Last year he engraved four notes with the image of Jane Austen, with each one valued at around £50,000.

This time around he has marked six notes – one for each goal Kane scored at the World Cup in Russia as he won the Golden Boot.

One has been given to the striker and another to the English FA, however one each of the other four will be spent in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as the Austen notes were.

The artist has revealed he has spent three of the notes so far, with the last one to be spent in an independent shop in Northern Ireland in the coming days.

'Magical feeling'

“I spent the first Harry Kane note in Meriden, which is the centre of England, only a few miles from the M40 and M42, and so that note could travel in any direction,” said Short.

“Now I’ve just been to Edinburgh and spent one in the Elephant House in Edinburgh, the coffee shop where JK Rowling first went as a young mum and started writing about Harry Potter. I just liked the magical feeling of that.

“The Welsh note, I went to Merthyr Tydfil, the forming mining town where my father was born.

“It’s not a wealthy area and I’m hoping that this note could help to change the life of someone in that area who finds it.

“The Northern Ireland note is still to be spent.”

The serial numbers of the Harry Kane notes (Image: Graham Short)

The fivers, which were commissioned by the Tony Huggins-Haig Gallery, remain legal tender as the engraving is done on the clear part of the note.

An elderly woman in Northern Ireland who discovered one of the Jane Austen notes returned it to the gallery asking that any money raised from it went towards helping young people.

It sold for £5,000 at auction in December 2017 – a thousand times its face value but much less that its estimated worth – with proceeds going to Children in Need.