Micro-engraved £5 notes featuring Jane Austen released across UK

Artist Graham Short, known for microscopic engravings, has created five £5 banknotes with a micro-portrait of Jane Austen, each now valued at £50,000. Short engraved the notes using new polymer bills issued in September, then spent them anonymously across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland with the help of his gallery, Tony Huggins-Haig in Kelso, Scotland. A fifth note was donated to the Jane Austen Society for the bicentenary of the writer's death in 2017. Inspired by Willy Wonka's golden tickets, the project aims to surprise ordinary people. Short, born July 4, 1946, in Birmingham, is considered a master of micro-art. As of the report, no one has yet found the notes, though a Scottish baker may have handled one. Short expressed hope that a worker or ordinary person would find and sell the notes for Christmas money.