A RARE £1million bank note put up for sale by its Atherton owner has been bought - for £80,000!

The £1million note - which is one of only two still left in existence - was sold by Bill Parkinson at Spink auctioneers, London, on Wednesday.

Unfortunately for Bill the note was not expected to achieve its face value but competetive bidding pushed the price from an expected £40,000 to more than double. It was bought by a UK-based private collector.

But it is understood that his total collection of 253 vintage bank notes could gross more than £500,000.

Bill, who sold his Lifting Gear Hire empire in Atherton for £13.5m two years ago and now owns award-winning Burnley brewery Moorhouses, bought the £1m note from Sotheby’s auctioneers in the early 1990s for an undisclosed fee.

He said: “The collection has got so big that the only notes I don’t have are so rare and expensive that if I was to buy them it would cost me too much.

“If you collect paintings you can hang them up and appreciate them, but with this it’s so valuable that I have to keep it locked up in a bank and there’s no enjoyment in that.”

Mr Parkinson, 68, said the time was right to sell the notes while he had control over the collection, especially as his three children had no interest in the notes.

The £1m note, which is green and eight-inches wide, is a Treasury note issued on August 30,1948, shortly after the Second World War in connection with the Marshall Aid plan, which was a loan of £8m from the USA to the UK.

The note is stamped with the words "Cancelled 6th Oct 1948, Bank of England" and joins other collectables such as an 1832 £5 note, three £1,000 notes and even a five shilling note.

Bill added: “Nearly 50-years-ago I had a friend who was a bank clerk at Lloyds, Burnley, when a farmer came in with £400 in £1 notes.

"They turned out to be treasury notes from the First World War and he brought some to show me.

“I bought four at face value (£4) and that’s how I got interested in collecting bank notes.”

Barnaby Faull, a valuer at Spink, added: “The £1m note is part of a very good collection.

"We sold the first £1m note nearly 20-years-ago so it’s nice to be selling the second one.”