The Pound coin

[soulman101]

Is 40 years old today.

[DaveP67 is back!]

That’s mad! Makes me feel very old

[WBA1955]

I still have a pound note.

[Omegstrat6]

I still have a pound note.

I kept a copy of both the older (series C) pound note and the smaller one (series D) that replaced it in 1979. Last issued in 1984 but legal gender until 1988. Strange to think that they were worth so much more when I was growing up and quite a rarity for me until I was old enough to work and they appeared in my wage packets. These days there isn't a lot you can buy with a pound coin and they've been devalued enough through inflation to be used as a holding payment for use of a supermarket trolley.

Quite sad in a way when you look back at the old lsd coinage with its farthings, ha'pennies, brass thruppeny bits and sixpences etc. Different times eh?

[Joy_Division]

I have a coffee in Costa most mornings and it costs £3.35p. That was half of my first weekly wage as an apprentice. Ridiculous.

[Prando]

I have a coffee in Costa most mornings and it costs £3.35p. That was half of my first weekly wage as an apprentice. Ridiculous.

I was better off JD buddy. My starting salary was similar at Midland Bank (remember them) in 1966. It was £360 per annum
I lived in ‘digs’ (remember them)

[Albionic68]

One of my mates went into a cycle repair shop to buy a new inner tube for his bike on the first day pound coins came into circulation.

The old fella behind the counter refused payment by pound coins because he had no idea they were even coming into circulation.

Didn't buy the papers, didn't have a radio, didn't have a TV and had absolutely no idea pound coins were about to become a thing.

Forty years on and if the old fella were still alive today he probably wouldn't have access to the internet either and would most likely be unaware they were now becoming an increasing irrelevance to many.

Bet he'd know the value of a pound when he needed one though.... and on that subject I'm open to donations if any of you don't want yours 😊 .

[phild]

I remember my brother used to clean all his old Victorian pennies with brown sauce, a tip he picked up from Blue Peter and they would come up like brand new. He found out later that cleaning them could make the coins worth less on the collectors market.

I remember nearly everyone in the early 70's checking their change to see if they could find an elusive, rare 1933 penny. This coin was highlighted by the fact that thieves had dug up the foundations of a church in 1970 where one of these rare coins had been buried. Only about a dozen were minted that year and 3 of them were buried beneath newly built buildings for that year. One had been unearthed and given to a museum and a third is still under a building of the London University.

[Omegstrat6]

I remember my brother used to clean all his old Victorian pennies with brown sauce, a tip he picked up from Blue Peter and they would come up like brand new. He found out later that cleaning them could make the coins worth less on the collectors market.

I remember nearly everyone in the early 70's checking their change to see if they could find an elusive, rare 1933 penny. This coin was highlighted by the fact that thieves had dug up the foundations of a church in 1970 where one of these rare coins had been buried. Only about a dozen were minted that year and 3 of them were buried beneath newly built buildings for that year. One had been unearthed and given to a museum and a third is still under a building of the London University.

I remember doing that very same thing with brown sauce having seen it on Blue Peter! Thankfully, I knew better by the time I'd inherited my grandad's coin collection. Nothing in it of great individual value but when I look at all those darkened Victorian or Edwardian pennies I can't help but think of all the hands they must have passed through and what they might have been used to pay for, whether bus or tram fares or foodstuffs. I've also got an old Victorian token that was probably used in the Black Country to "spend" in one of the Earl of Dudley's shops.

[Albionic68]

I have a coffee in Costa most mornings and it costs £3.35p. That was half of my first weekly wage as an apprentice. Ridiculous.

So in a five day working week you'd pay £16.75 for coffee that tastes like hot liquid cardboard? Times that £16.75 by how many weeks in the year you visit Costa. Now that's ridiculous 😉 .