A YOUTUBE star from Basingstoke who takes a suitcase into a bank each week to go home with £1,240 in change has earned himself 55,000 subscribers.

Christopher Collects launched his YouTube channel in 2017 after developing an interest in coin collecting.

Now, the 28-year-old’s videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people on YouTube as he searches through cash for valuable coins.

Find out Christopher's top five collectable coins you could find in your change here. 

Christopher’s hobby involves him going into a bank each week with an empty suitcase and returning home with £1,000 in change which he then sorts through for valuable or interesting coins.

His discoveries have included finding three of the rarest 50ps in one search – a video which has been watched by more than 220,000 people.

Speaking to the Gazette, Christopher said: “It’s been something I have been interested in since I was a kid then in 2017, I saw people were looking at coins online in the US but that no one was doing it in the UK. So, I thought why don’t I start recording it? It sounds boring but I have more than 50,000 subscribers.”

Christopher researches valuable coins online, looking up the mintage after a coin has gone into circulation.

The mintage refers to the quantity of coins of a specific type made by the mint. Coins with a low mintage tend to be more valuable as collectors’ items.

However, Christopher warned people to do their research before buying coins on websites such as EBay, where coins can be sold for far more than their worth.

He points out that coin collecting is a great hobby and a good way to save money, but few people can make a living from it.

“I’ve never made a profit from selling coins,” he said, adding: “The designs I look for celebrate such great British institutions. I get very excited when I find one I’ve always wanted. I have a bookshelf at home with my most prized coins.”

Christopher is on the lookout for a 50p celebrating 50 years of decimalisation, marked on February 15 this year, half a decade since Britain moved to a currency system based on units of 10.

Some of his favourite coins include 10ps with different letters of the alphabet on them each representing something British, from E for English Breakfast to N for National Health Service.

Other coins he looks out for are the Olympic collection of 50ps, which vary in value from the common ones worth around £1.20 to the rarer ones such as the football 50p which could be worth around £20.

Christopher, who works full-time but keeps his role secret to avoid YouTube fans trying to track him down, returns his change to the bank after sorting through it, before visiting a different bank to ensure he doesn’t receive the same money back again.

The coin enthusiast recently appeared on an episode of Steph’s Packed Lunch to talk about coin collecting.