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Current coinageImage:British money coins.jpg Obverse and reverse of common coins in current circulation, £2, £1, 50p, 20p, 10p, 5p, 2p and 1p
Every year, newly minted coins are checked for size, weight, and composition at a Trial of the Pyx. Essentially the same procedure has been used since the thirteenth century. Assaying is now done by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths on behalf of HM Treasury. The total amount of coinage in circulation is roughly three and a quarter billion pounds, of which the £1 and £2 coins account for almost two billion pounds [1]. With their high copper content, the pre-1992 1p and 2p coins would be worth more if melted down than their face value (as of February 2007). To do this, however, would be illegal, and they would need to be melted in huge quantities to achieve significant gain. Obverse of modern coins
Values and dates
A Quarter Penny coin, to be struck in aluminium, was proposed at the time decimalisation was being planned, but was never minted. The Half Penny coin was demonetised in 1984. The standard One Penny and Two Pence coins originate in 1971 and are the oldest standard issue coins still in circulation. In the 1990s the Royal Mint reduced the sizes of the Five Pence, Ten Pence and Fifty Pence coins. As a consequence, the oldest 5p coins in circulation date from 1990, the oldest 10p coins from 1992 and the oldest 50p coins come from 1997. Since 1997, many special commemorative designs of 50p have been issued. Some of these are to be found in circulation and some are not. They are all legal tender. The Twenty Pence coin was introduced in 1982 to fill the gap between the 10p and 50p coins. The first pound coin was introduced in 1983 to replace the Bank of England £1 banknote which was discontinued in 1984 (although the Scottish banks continued producing them for some time afterwards; the last of them, the Royal Bank of Scotland £1 note, is still in production as of early 2006). The designs on the one pound coin change often in a largely five-year cycle. A circulating bimetallic £2 coin was also introduced in 1998 (first minted in, and dated, 1997). There had previously been unimetallic commemorative £2 coins which did not normally circulate. This tendency to use the two pound coin for commemorative issues has continued since the introduction of the bimetallic coin, and a few of the older unimetallic coins have since entered circulation. There are also commemorative issues of Crowns. Before 1990 they were rated as 25p pieces, equivalent to the five shilling crown used in pre-decimal Britain. However, in 1990 crowns were redefined with a face value of Five Pounds as the previous value was considered not important enough for such a high-status coin. The size and weight of the coin remained exactly the same. Decimal crowns are generally not found in circulation as their market value is likely to be higher than that of their face value, but they remain legal tender Several of these coins have changed in size and design since first introduction. For more details, see the individual pages for each coin.
Specifications
Images
New designsIn August 2005, the Royal Mint launched a competition to find new designs for 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p and 50p coins. The competition closed on 14 November 2005. New designs will be subjected to public consultation before their introduction, and the successful designers will receive £5,000 in prize money. The competition to find new UK coin designs has fuelled speculation that the UK will not be joining the Euro any time soon. Other British coinsCrown Dependencies and Overseas TerritoriesThe Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories of the United Kingdom, although using the Pound, are responsible for their own economies, and thus mint their own coinage. These are in the same denominations as those of the UK, but with their own designs. Coins from British dependencies are sometimes found in change in other jurisdictions, but are not legal tender in the United Kingdom and tend not to be accepted by UK traders and banks. Since they have the same specifications as UK coins, they are sometimes tolerated in commerce, and can readily be used in vending machines. British coins, on the other hand, are acceptable in the dependencies which use the pound.
Maundy moneyThere are Maundy coins in denominations of one, two, three and four pence. They bear dates from 1822 to the present and are minted in very small quantities. Though they are legal tender in the UK, they are never encountered in circulation. The pre-decimal Maundy pieces have the same legal tender status and value as post-decimal ones, and were effectively increased in face value by 140% upon decimalization. Their numismatic value is, of course, much greater. Bullion coinageThe traditional bullion coin issued by Britain is the gold sovereign, formerly a circulating coin, with a face value of one pound. Since 1987 a series of bullion coins, the Britannia, has been issued, containing one troy ounce, half ounce, quarter ounce, and one-tenth ounce of fine gold at a millesimal fineness of 917 (22 carat) and with face values of £100, £50, £25, and £10. Since 1997 silver bullion coins have also been produced under the name “Britannias”. The alloy used is Britannia silver (millesimal fineness 958). The silver coins are available in 1 ounce, 1⁄2 ounce, 1⁄4 ounce, and 1⁄10 ounce sizes. Pre-decimal system
Pre-decimalisation, the pound was divided into 240 pennies (or pence) rather than 100, though it was rarely expressed in this way. Rather it was expressed in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, where:
Thus: £1 = 240 pence. The penny was further subdivided at various times, though these divisions vanished as inflation made them irrelevant:
Using the example of five shillings and sixpence, the standard ways of writing shillings and pence were:
The sum of 5/6 would be spoken as "five shillings and sixpence" or "five and six". The symbol, £, for the pound is derived from the first letter of the Latin word for pound, the librum.[2] This symbol is found in the Unicode table as (U+00A3) (which renders as £), and differs from that allocated to the Turkish and former Italian unit, the lira, which derives from the same source word. That symbol is usually two-barred, and is found at (U+20A4) (₤). Whilst the British pound symbol may occasionally be found written with two bars, many people follow the convention used on Bank of England banknotes which is to use just one bar; the same is generally used for type faces. The old abbreviation for the penny, d, was derived from the Roman denarius, and the abbreviation for the shilling, s, from the Roman solidus. The shilling was also denoted by the slash symbol, also called a solidus for this reason. The English penny was derived from a silver coin (the sceat of 20 grains weight) which was in general circulation in Europe during the Middle Ages. The weight of this coin was originally 20 grains but was fixed at 22.5 grains by Offa of Mercia (an 8th century contemporary of Charlemagne), or 1⁄240 of a Tower pound—around 1.46 grams. The Troy pound replaced the Tower pound in the 16th century, but by then the penny had been heavily debased to about a third the silver content of a proper Troy 24 grain pennyweight (1.555g). The coinage reform of 1816 set up a weight/value ratio and physical sizes for silver coins which remained constant in the UK until decimalisation, and even after decimalisation for those coins which had equivalents and continued to be minted with their values in new pence. This weight/value ratio and size system survived the debasement of silver in 1920, and the adoption of token coins of cupro-nickel in 1947. The system was also widely adopted throughout the British Empire, including Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, South Africa, Rhodesia, etc. The UK finally abandoned it in the 1990s by the introduction of smaller, more convenient, coins. Some implementations of the PL/I programming language contained a "STERLING" data type for arithmetical calculations involving pre-decimalisation currency. The sum of two pounds, ten shillings and sixpence, for example, was represented as 2.10.6L (note the capital "L" at the end). The pre-decimalisation coins with exact decimal equivalent values continued in use after 1971 alongside the new coins, albeit with new names, (e.g., the Shilling became the 5p coin, and the Florin equating to 10p). The others were withdrawn almost immediately but most of those that did have precise equivalents in the new system remained legal tender until they were replaced by smaller coins in the early 1990s. Pre-decimalisation shillings were used as 5p coins, with many people calling the new 5p coin a shilling, since it remained 1/20 of a pound, but was now worth 5p instead of 12d. The pre-decimalisation sixpence, also known as a sixpenny bit or sixpenny piece, was rated at 2½p but was demonetised in 1980. A similar pre-decimal system operated in France, also based on the Roman currency, consisting of the livre (L) sol (s) and denier (d). SlangSome pre-decimalisation coins or denominations became commonly known by slang terms, perhaps the most well known being bob for a shilling, and quid for a pound. A farthing was a mag, a silver threepence was a joey and the later aluminium-bronze threepence was called a threepenny bit (pronounced threp'ny bit or thrupenny bit), a sixpence was a tanner , the two-shilling coin or florin was a two-bob bit, and the two shillings and sixpence coin or half-crown was a half dollar. Quid remains as popular slang for one or more pounds to this day in Britain in the form "a quid" and then "two quid" etc. The slang name of some pre-decimal coins are still in but with changed usage. "Threepenny bits" (often contracted to "threp'nies") is rhyming slang for "breasts" and "two-bob bit" is rhyming slang for "defecating". Silver contentFrom the time of Charlemagne until the 12th century, the silver currency of England was made from the highest purity silver available. Unfortunately there were drawbacks to minting currency of Fine Silver, notably the level of wear it suffered, and the ease with which coins could be "clipped", or trimmed by those dealing in the currency. In the 12th century a new standard for English coinage was established by Henry II, the Sterling Silver standard of metal—92.5% silver and 7.5% copper used in coinage. This was a harder wearing alloy, yet it was still a rather high grade of silver. It went some way to discouraging the practice of "clipping", though this practice was further discouraged and largely eliminated with the introduction of the milled edge we see on coins today. In 1920, the silver content of all British coins was reduced from 92.5% to 50%, with a portion of the remainder consisting of manganese, which caused the coins to tarnish to a very dark colour after they had been in circulation for a significant period. Silver was eliminated altogether in 1947, except for Maundy coinage, which returned to the pre-1920 92.5 percent silver composition. History of the penny
The penny was originally one '"pennyweight"' of silver. A pennyweight is a unit of mass which is the same as 1.555 grams, or 1⁄240 of a troy pound. So, a penny was literally, as well as monetarily, 1⁄240 of a troy pound of sterling silver. The weight of this coin was instituted by Charlemagne, and the purity of 92.5% silver (i.e., sterling silver) was instituted by Henry II in 1158 with the "Tealby Penny"—a hammered coin. At this time the standard unit of currency in England was the penny. The medieval penny would have been the equivalent of around 1s 6d in value in 1915. British government sources suggest that prices have risen over 61-fold since 1914, so a medieval sterling silver penny might have the equivalent purchasing power of around £4.50 today, and a farthing (a quarter penny) would have the value of slightly more than today's pound (about £1.125). Denominations of pre-decimal coins and their years of production
Note: * = denomination issued for use in the colonies, usually in Ceylon, Malta, or the West Indies, but normally counted as part of the British coinage. The medieval florin, half florin, and quarter florin were gold coins intended to circulate in Europe as well as in England and were valued as much more than the Victorian and later florin and double florin. The medieval florins were withdrawn within a year because they contained insufficient gold for their face value and thus were unacceptable to merchants. All British coins produced since 1662 have been milled; the first milled coins were produced during the reign of Elizabeth I and periodically during the reigns of James I and Charles I, but there was opposition to mechanisation from the moneyers who ensured that most coins continued to be produced by hammering. In medieval times, the penny was a sterling silver coin. English silver pennies are a collectible, and are now quite rare. See also
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