At Engravers Guild, the feature-piece of many of our personalised gifts is the custom engraving. The individual message is what makes it unique and creates a special exchange.
However, we could not help but be impressed by an engraver in Birmingham, whose work you cannot even see at all.
Graham Short, the world famous ‘micro engraver’, creates engraved images so small that they cannot be seen without the aid of a microscope.
He came to attention when inscribing the entirety of the Lord’s Prayer onto the head of a pin, and his latest commission could create a windfall jackpot for some lucky people this Christmas.
To mark the launch of the new £5 note, Mr Short painstakingly carved tiny portraits of Jane Austen onto the special notes, next to the images of Sir Winston Churchill and Big Ben.
Reported by the Birmingham Mail, it took two weeks to engrave the images on each of the four £5 notes, with the painstaking work being carried out at night when the vibrations from traffic are lower.
An art exhibitor who has previously shown similar work, estimates that each of the four £5 notes now in circulation could be worth over £20,000.
So before you hand over that crisp polymer note the next time you’re at the tills, pull out your magnifying glass first to check that you don’t have the real-life ‘Golden Ticket’.