Coining It In

You know how it is when you go into a gift shop while you're on holiday - they're full of all kinds of useless junk, from bottles of coloured sand to paper weights made of dead things washed up on the beach.

I found this tin at Cheddar Gorge (Somerset) and I was enthused by the idea of collecting loose change in it.

It cost £1 so I decided to save £1 coins.

That was 18 months ago and it has just reached the point where it can be reasonably described as full. It is possible to force a few more in but what the hell, curiosity has beaten me.

The time has come to open it up.

Everyone had a go at estimating how much was inside. The excitement was brought to fever pitch by the promise of a prize of the five shiniest coins for the closet guess.

Answers were written on post-it notes and folded up. The tension was almost too much to bear...

So I thought I'd drag it out a bit by weighing the tin to get an idea.

The whole thing was 1,970g, an empty tin is about 44g and a £1 coin is 10g .

So a little elementary maths says that there should be about £192.

We could wait no longer. So without further ado, Emma took the can opener to it.

The lip was a little deeper than on a normal tin and the opener did not fit too well. We struggled to get it to cut into the lid, it seemed like the tin was fighting back. I wondered if this was some kind of additional security.

But it didn't keep us out for long - we were in...

See what was inside