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Could a fiver featuring Jane Austen be worth thousands of pounds?

Five pound notes (Getty Images)

People with £5 notes in their pockets are being urged to check them carefully, in case they could fetch thousands of pounds more.

Artist and engraver Graham Short has put four £5 notes into circulation on which he has engraved a tiny portrait of 18th-century author Jane Austen.

The notes also have quotes from the writer's work.

Short, who works out of Birmingham and is one of the world's most famous micro-artists, worked for two weeks on each note and then quietly put each one back into circulation.

The microscopic engraving can only be seen in certain lights.

The 70-year-old decided to use Jane Austen because next year is the 200th anniversary of her death and her image will be on the new £10 note.

He told Sky News: "She had a passion for reverence and ridicule and I think she would really like this idea."

The artist is not sure how much his work will be worth but said something similar was insured for £50,000.

When asked about how the Bank of England felt about one of their notes being "defaced", he said: "I wouldn't have started this without contacting the Bank of England. Actually, they're quite relaxed about it.

"I've spoken to them several times and, at the moment, they're more concerned with the animal products in it than my engravings."

The fiver ran into trouble last week with the news that the polymer note, which is meant to withstand considerable manhandling, contains animal fat, prompting complaints from some  vegans, vegetarians and religious groups .

This is not the first time the creator of the world's smallest engravings has impressed with his precise work - he engraved Nothing is Impossible on the sharp end of a razor blade and put all 1841 separate cuts of the Lord's Prayer on a pinhead.

The engraver explained: "I always tell people that the thickness of a human hair is 100 microns and some of the work I do is only four microns high which is smaller than a red human blood cell so it really is small."