Posted on 03/15/2017 7:09:41 PM PDT by hanamizu
The new £1 coin comes into circulation this month, signalling the beginning of the end for the round pound, which will be completely phased out by 15 October.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
That and it was a pretty ugly coin. I’ve read that the designers at the mint tried to soften up Susan B’s features but her family insisted on portraying her as she was. Even the more pleasant-looking Sacagawea dollar with its “gold” color hasn’t made much of a dent in circulation.
Will there also be shillings and farthings like they had in the past?
If not, why not?
Make sure you unload all your legacy £1 coins before they become worthless.. ;-)
“Britain went from sterling (.925) for its silver coins to .50 as a result of WWI and replaced silver with copper nickel after WWII.”
Even after decimalisation the shillings and florins (two shilling) coins continued in use as 5p and 10p coins.
I have a distinct memory from 1980 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan how gold and silver soared in price. Someone mentioned on the media that we should examine our coins and look for coins dated prior to 1947 (I think) as they were 50% silver and consequently worth a heck of a lot more than their face value.
I remember my dad who ran a retail business bringing home bags of 5p and 10p coins for us all to sort through to find such coins, well we found plenty of old shillings and florins, many dating back to King George VI but needless to say none earlier than that.
Clearly the government had long since withdrawn all those coins without letting on.
It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that the old coins were phased out and I distinctly remember laughing at the ridiculous shiny little 5p coin (the same size as a US dime, give or take) that replaced the solid, thick, heavy and dull silver shilling-sized coins, but it was remarkable how quickly the old coins were forgotten.
Well, they eliminated shillings when they went to decimal coinage. A shilling was 1/20 of a pound, so it became 5p. A farthing was 1/4 of a penny, so inflation doomed the farthing even before decimalization.
When I was a kid £1 was worth close to $5. There were 240 pence (d) to the pound so a British penny was worth about 2 1/2 cents. Today £1 is about $1.25 so 5¢ is worth about 4p.
What made British money so interesting (and confusing for Americans) were all of the different names. Farthing (1/4d) half pence (1/2d), penny (1d), threepence (3d), groat (4d), sixpence (half shilling), shilling (12d), florin (2 shillings/24d), half crown (2 shillings six pence), and crown (5 shillings-about the size and value of a silver dollar). And then the is the guinea, originally a coin but later only used as a way to make things look cheaper than they were. A guinea was 21 shillings or £1 1 shilling.
One advantage to this system was that everyone who used money had to have some math.
£sd RIP
Check out a 1950 Federal Reserve Note sometime. Those were redeemable for lawful money.
“Even the more pleasant-looking Sacagawea dollar with its “gold” color hasn’t made much of a dent in circulation.”
Maybe they should try a George S. Patton dollar. Too many people know about Sacagawea.
It needed to happen, so many of the quid coins these days are made of lead it is ridiculous.
They are the standard parking token, so this is going to cost a fortune in machine conversions.
Plastic notes, strange shaped coins, whatever next....
1982-2017 RIP dear Parking Token.
Sometimes changing currencies helps in fighting organized crime; people stuck with loads of ill-gotten cash have to do something with it...
They are making change because 3% of pound coins are counterfeit. Now all vending machines, slot machines, turnstiles, etc. have to be adapted twice. Once now, to take both new and old coins, and again in October to only take new ones.
Is it possible that the fix is more expensive than the problem?
I saw a cartoon with a Scotsman carrying a big bag of farthings, rushing to cash them in before the deadline.
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