Why Is The UK 2 Pence Coin So Big? A Rambling Look At British Currency
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ก.ย. 2024
- A while back, someone asked in the comments "Why is your 2 pence coin so enormous, and your 1 pound coin so small?"
There is a reason for this, and it's a pretty simple one, but instead of giving you the straight answer, I'm going to witter on a bit about the history of British currency...
*The value of Your 2P coin* - people keep commenting to say they have a 2 pence coin and ask how much it's worth.
It's about 2 pence.
Here, our 2 euro cents is exactly/roughly worth 2 euro cents.
@@thecurrencyaggregation9103 Tengo varias de su amigo me llamo Francisco soy Argentina Latinoamérica de Rosario Santa Fe
Here, our floor is about/exactly worth a floor
Wow! I didn't know that your currency is so similar to ours! A toonie is about 2 dollars!!!
The copper 2ps are worth more in melting
"IT'S LEGAL TENDER!!!" - every Scot vacationing in England, in the eighties, trying to buy chips with a pound note.
And it's funny, because Scottish Money isn't legal tender, and in fact legal tender doesn't mean what most people think it does. Legal tender is a term that only applies to settling debts, and only includes a certain amount of copper coins (something like up to 20p in 1 pence pieces and up to a pound in 2's.) and then the regular Royal Mint currency.
Edit: And shops are entirely able to not take legal tender at all, or only take legal tender, or really take anything they want as payment.
Oliver is correct! But also, genveers is right - I think of all the times I have heard the term 'legal tender' spoken in public, it was in a Scots accent maybe 80% of those times
Same for Northern Ireland's note lol
i had the same with manx notes much more recently!
@@mysterycrumble
What? There are Manx notes? 😯
Wow. The UK currency system is both very cool and uncool.
Cool because it's a very complicated system that even kids use.
And uncool because it's very tedious for travelers, especially foreign ones. 🤔
Is it just me or he's low key flexing on his coin collection
We all love coin flex
I prefer CoinSquirt
Atomic Shrimp I use it regularly. I have convinced my colleagues that coinsquirt is the way forward for cryptocurrency. Seriously though I’ve been wondering for a while, did you make that website?
Yeah, I made it because I was hoping to lure some scammer into thinking I've paid him via CoinSquirt, then make all of the 'withdraw balance' options fail in different ways.
@@AtomicShrimp Haha I hadn't seen that website before, those are some top-rate liquid puns
"The nostalgia we used to have is better than the nostalgia we have today."
Great gag.
I cannot believe i missed this. Shameful
Yes, ICH DIEN is written on the coin.
TO SERVE in German, makes you wonder who you're serving.
@@steviewonder7495 ; Not "To serve" but "I serve". "the motto of the Prince of Wales, adopted with the crest of ostrich feathers after the battle of Crécy (1346), from John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, who was killed in the battle."
@@FirstDagger is it german or not?
@@steviewonder7495 ; Used by the King of Bohemia, the state also known as the Czech Kingdom in English literature. The correct form as apparently used on Black Prince's grave, is "Ich diene". But the English never could pronounce German pronounced words (e.g. Marine), so that is probably why it was changed to the more slang sounding version unless they mean it to be a Past form like "diente".
Ladies and gentlemen, a man who made a 10+ minute without an advert.
An advert would definitely ruin the flow of explanation
Pasha Staravoitau tbh same
Pasha Staravoitau no, my interests are more get out there and do something
I'm pretty sure I saw product placement for the Royal Bank of Scotland plc.
WythenshawePhil that is incorrect, Scotland does not exist and is purely a myth
Some people would have made a short video to answer the question, maybe put it in a Q&A.
This absolute legend however whips out his coin collection and properly explains the reasons behind the changes that happened to the 1 pound coin and the changes that didn't happen to the 2 pence coin. Fantastic. I now know more about the british pound than I do know about my own currency lol
It IS my own currency, and I even lived through decimalisation, and I know more about my currency now too.
"I hope that was interesting".
Mate, that was bloody fascinating!
Yes, it was like watching a pileup being cleared to become a trainwreck.
I loved that video so much information!
Just here giving props for the nostalgia joke
I disagree. He used to to make much better nostalgia jokes in the past.
Colonel Chestbridge i remember back in the day having to walk uphill both ways when i went to my nostalgia classes at school.
@@stupidas9466 In the snow. Barefooted!
School? You were lucky to go to school. At that age I had to work in the nostalgia mill ánd pay the mill owner for permission to come to work. All that on -30 minutes sleep and a lump of cold poison for breakfast.
Nostalgia for nostalgia
"We like our nostalgia here in Britain although I have to say the nostalgia we used to have is better than the nostalgia we have today"
This had me laughing for about 5 minutes!
Really interesting video, it's stuff like this that makes yours one of my favourite channels on TH-cam.
Dammm as I started reading your comment that part of the video came on
You laughed for 5 minutes over that? lol
My Grandad always used to talk about how much things used to cost when telling old stories and it always used to confuse me! i still cant get my head around the old British currency haha!
My grandad still does always says "I made 2 pund and sixpence back when I worked in the shipyard, we used to sly the sixpence out of our paypacket and say we got underpaid, we always got the extra sixpence until they started stapling the envelope" haha that crafty old bugger
Same
Hey @Disturban I know it’s stupid of me to ask this but could you give me a shoutout
@JDQ 240p in a pound would be so much easier to split. Can't even divide 100 by three
Yes, just imagine what we had to do in primary school adding up long additions like £1/2/6 + £2/13/9 + £4/17/6 .... etc. Even more complicated than binary! But we were used to it and there was indeed resistance to the change.
I remember it well. I was in primary school when the change happened. We were presented with a cardboard folder of all the new coins as a momento to keep forever. Of course, on Decimal Day we all popped the coins out of the folder and bought sweets.
explains why so many exist on ebay today, wish they did it for the new £1 coin
Like I got (I don't know about other € countries) when the € was introduced. A few have them as the start for their (€)coin collection, but most got €3.88 to spend how they liked (sweets).
Kids did this in the US too when the US Mint changed the design of the Washington quarters in 1999. Everyone in my class got 5 quarters (the first five states). All the coins ended up in the vending machine lol.
I won a shiny new ½ crown for a poem I wrote at school. I decided to keep it as memento. The next day I spent it.
SUPER NEIL HARRIS. Millllllll
I only recently realised that the coins follow a series of 1 2 & 5 for every, uh, 'level'. 1p 2p 5p / 10p 20p 50p / £1 £2 £5 / £10 £20 £50. This roughly means you can make maximum different values with minimum different denominations of coins.
I think there are patterns that can do it more efficiently than 1,2,5, but they are difficult for humans - I remember watching a video by Numberphile or some other channel - the coins were weird awkward values - like 1p, 3p, 7p... 37p etc
The ones, I get. The fives, I can understand. But other than the old system, why exactly do we need the twos again?
@Angelic Dirt
it's about minimising the number of coins you have to use to make change; if you have 1,2,5 and you need to give 9p change, it's 3 coins:- 5+2+2. If you don't have 2p coins, 9p change requires 5 coins:- 5+1+1+1+1
The same holds true at the other levels, so to make 99p change: 50+20+20+5+2+2 (6 coins)
if you don't have 2 or 20, it's 50+10+10+10+10+5+1+1+1+1 (10 coins)
@@AtomicShrimp Neat. And thanks. :3
@@AtomicShrimp Aye it's a balance. You can have an extra 25 pence (like a US quarter) which'd minimise coinage needed in some ways, but also add extra confusion by introducing a new coin into circulation.
"There were all of these coins, this one's called a farthing and is worth 1/4 penny."
Oh, interesting. **sips coffee**
"Now lets put the farthing and the penny next to each other... there, now you know why those old bicycles are called penny farthings."
**spits coffee at the screen**
That genuinely surprised me quite a lot, because it was just so unexpected from the context and I had never dreamed the name would come from something like that!
@Redblade Yikes, so it was worth one sixteenth of a penny?? Did the pound suddenly, like, gain much more value or something? Because even accounting for inflation I couldn't imagine what would be worth that small an amount.
@@Scum42 it's called inflation I guarantee the currency of your country has also gone through the same thing
I had totally the same reaction!
@@thissmithymanga7119 I literally mentioned inflation in my comment lol
@Redblade definitely never see a white fiver...
You deserve a more complimentary title than ‘rambling’, Shrimp. This was slick, informative and massively interesting!
I'd never think to see you here
I'm a huge fan
Hello Regit! Love your vids!
This was genuinely fascinating. I was born in '98 so naturally grew up post decimalisation and could never make heads or tails (unintentional coin pun, yay) of the old currency this has kinda helped with that. If you ever see this, thanks Shrimp.
And yet time is still non-decimal - 24 hours in a day. 60 seconds, 60 minutes. 7 day week. Odd numbers of days in months. 365 or 366 days per year. hmmm
ana player
@@thriizii I certainly used to be, haven't played Overwatch in years now but I haven't change my pic either... still her icon is pretty cool.
@@christinasharp420 true, ana is cool in general
Here in Guernsey, we still have a one pound note and so does the rest of the channel islands. Weirdly enough we're able to spend them in English airports but no shops will take them in the UK.
I used to work as a bar tender and the landlord told me not to take them because we don't know how to check for fakes.
Guernsey pounds are actually not legal tender in the UK. They can be converted 1:1 for UK pounds, though. Despite this I do occasionally see Guernsey coins in my change.
I lived in Guernsey for 5 years,lovely place, any Corona over there?
Tim. No krona. They use sterling!
I have some 30 year old Jersy notes from when my mom visited the island. Went to the UK last year and tried to pay with those money. They didnt take the notes but the coins because it was stirling but from Jersy. It is absurd the amount of different notes and coins in the UK that are still valid. I love it.
When I say I’m busy I’m really just watching some guy talk about why the 2p is so big for 10 minutes
This was extremely helpful. As someone who lives across the pond, the British currency was always a mystery to me; most notably when I watch any movie that depicts a version of a historic UK/British colony. The description of the shilling was probably the most helpful.
pre-decimal currency was based around 12 for its divisibility. if a pound (weight) of something cost 1 shilling, you could buy a quarter-pound, third of a pound, half-pound, two thirds of a pound, three-quarters, or five-sixths of a pound for a whole number of pennies; something you can't do with decimal currency.
On an unrelated note, the British phrase 'spend a penny' meaning to visit the toilet, dates back to the Great Exhibition of 1851 where the cubicle door locks were operated by inserting an old penny coin
@@nrellis666 : These days it costs at least 20p to "spend a penny" :-(
It's a mystery to most of us in the UK too!
@@nrellis666adjusted for inflation 1d in 1851 would be the equivalent of 49p in 2024
Dear Americans: seem confusing? This is what the imperial system looks like to the rest of the developed world. 😂
word
We don't use the Imperial system. never did. The Imperial system was defined in 1824, after we left the empire.
@@QuixoteX You still use it.
America has also had 16 different value coins tho
@@QuixoteX that's still called the imperial system if you like it or not
i remember i was about 4yo, there was a merry-go-round in the park and i asked the man in charge for a ride but he wouldnt let me on because i only had 1 old-penny and the price of the ride was 1 NEW penny.. i went home crying but mother didnt have any new pennies, so i had to go without a ride.
good old days they were.
What a miserable git eh?
Oh my! What gauche oaf! I rode the merry go round many a time as a child, and if mummy or daddy had encountered such an ignoraminous nincompoop, father would have had some very harsh words with him indeed; he would have called him a simpleton bungler and bid him fair well!
@@cretinousswine8234 Let me guess, you're American?
Cheers steve
I used to get 6d pocket money. I could get with it, a comic, and sweets to eat whilst reading the comic, and still have change. A 'Matchbox' toy car would be 9d - exactly the amount my gran would give me for going to the shops for her. Various uncles and aunts would give me money on visits - my dad's older brother only ever seemed to have half crowns as change, and if you had one of them in 1967, the sweetshop was your oyster. Birthdays and Christmas were the only time you'd see a Ten Shilling note, and if my Nan had spent most of her year in Jersey, then a pound note would often flutter out of a card, and you'd probably faint. If you told someone today that you had a pound, and really didn't know what to do with it (the Matchbox, Corgi, Dinky, and Airfix catalogues were a good clue, though), they wouldn't believe you.
My favourite pre decimal coin was the Threepenny bit, which kids of my age called 'Thrubbies'.
What an excellent video. Thank you.
'"O wow Atomic is really taking this Corona seriously, he has gloves on. I wonder why."...*whips out rare as f**k currency* "oh"
k currency
the coins aren't actually that difficult to get. i myself have a collection of a load of old pennies, the oldest dating back to the victorian era
@@FlameBunny did you even read the comment?
yeah most of this stuff really isnt rare, most of the pennies and half pennies you can buy for literal pennies
@@FlameBunny it's almost like the comment said exactly that
Formal petition for this to be part of a new documentary series on your channel: I Can Document Anything
I honestly miss the pre decimal days - and I wasn't even born yet! All those lovely coins, a Farthing, a Shilling, a Crown, and let's not forget the Groat and the Angel - what a neat way to design currency that was. Thank you very much for sharing the information and your coin collection! Highly valued! (pun intended)
....I'm happy for your nostalgia but ultimately glad for the stress-levels of every man, woman and child of the Brtish Isles that no longer has to deal with the mathematical train wreck which was "the old way"
@@vice.nor.virtue I bet that people who were familiar with (maybe grew up with) the system would not at all consider it stressful - it was probably as normal as going through all the equations we are facing when calculating whether we can afford something or what coins to pick in order to pay for something within the system that we are familiar with.
@@fabianrose3688 Yes I'm sure if you grow up with it it's fine, but to people from foreign markets (that the UK deals with a lot, we are very much a country of international trade) it's a goddam nightmare. This is similar to learning a language as a native, or emmegrating to a country and having to learn it as an adult. For me, learning German is a massive hastle and is such an unweildly language that I can't even believe it exists in the way it does. Most young people here really like english because it's easy to use and easy to learn. Why use a bulky outdated system of currency, when an obvious new and intuitive version exists everywhere else and everyone uses it?
I've got the same case of _feeling nostalgic for something I've never actually experienced._
There's just something I find really comforting about the idea of the pre-decimal coins. It's probably the same feeling I had as a child, when having a few _coins_ in your pocket made you feel rich.
It would also be good for children today to experience divisions beyond _10s._
If you go to Blists Hill Victorian village, part of the Ironbridge museums trust, you can exchange your modern money for old coins (or rather specially made tokens in the same shape and size as the old coins). All the shops on the site are dual priced in modern prices and 1900 prices, ans you can experience using and paying in old coins. If I remember correctly, 40p is the equivalent of 1d, so £4.80 would be a shilling.
You've just taught me a few things about the pre-decimal currency. I'm 50 and was born in 1969, so I just missed out on many of them, except the few coins and £1 note, that where carried across to decimalisation. I never even realised that a 2 shilling coin (or 2 bob/10 pence) was called a florin or there was a '10 bob' note.
I was born in 1970 and there is *one* echo of the old 10 bob note that I remember...the commonly used phrase in my youth that a particularly flamboyant homosexual was "bent as a nine bob note". Bent in this regard being used in a double meaning of both "homosexual" and "counterfeit".
@@d2factotum ...and if they were very bent they could change it into 3 threes...!!
Fafski11 I’m surprised you didn’t know about a 10 bob note: I was born in 1991 and still remember the phrase ‘as bent as a 9 bob note’, lol
You've taught me so many things I didn't know I wanted to learn in such a small amount of time. I feel like crying 😃
I'm a busker and I always wondered why I would sometimes get very large 5, 10 and 50p coins
The old money is now worth way more than it used to be just because its vintage
Solar how much are old pound coins worth? Non bi metal like the original pounds that came out??
You were given old money but if you want some money sell them on amazon or eBay and you will get good money for them
Or u can keep them in a coin collectors book
Interesting as I never knew the pre decimal stuff in detail. Somehow I don't remember the 50p change. Huh, maybe because the freak out people had over the new 5p being hard to handle.
And the panic over getting rid of your old pound coins. Coz they were actually worth something.
Excellent video, I knew very little of this!
Coming from you, that's a big deal. Love your videos.
Ha dumm
Your here!
Hello
Hello
Notice that a 2p coin weighs exactly twice that of a 1p coin. They're designed like that so that bank counting machines have an easier time counting copper coins (now copper-coated stainless steel).
_Ah, you just made that point as I was typing it lol._
How was the weight ratio kept after the material change?
How else could we uniform sales of "commodities "
Penny an eighth
@Black.Flaps .Dont.Match metric oz and the imperial oz have narrowed the gap.. its weird
@@aresgood1 They kept the weight ratio by changing the thickness of the coin instead.
"considering the magnitude of change" is an underappreciated joke.
When my kid is grown up they'll be like, "you used bits of metal to pay for stuff?"
"Like, you actually had to touch money *other* people had handled? Urrgghh!"
@@SportyMabamba well this one will severely diminish if not outright die given current events
Peter Tripp
As long as my kids ain’t mix raced I’m gonna go to heaven
@Andy Moran. No, I meant they'll say "Like, whateverrr" in an anachronistic 80s Valley Girl accent.
Wrong paper and metal will never go away because... Drugs. Well maybe metal will but definitely not paper.
Ahh the good old pre-decimal coinage. My Granny would give me half a crown when I visited her. A small fortune in sweets and comics back in those days. :)
Mine too. 💋
The half crown was a wonderful, weighty coin to have in your hand.
Thank you for this great video. Very informative. The funny thing about the first decimal copper coins is that they were first issued in 1968 though it´s dated 1971. So it was issued before it could be used for any payment. These first coins were part of a little booklet called "Britain`s first decimal coins" which contained all coins from the half penny to the 10 pence coin but without the 50 pence coin. These booklets were given out to make people familiar with the new coins. The 50 pence coin was not part of it as it was not clear at that time if a 50 pence coin should be issued or a banknote of that value. Because of ongoing inflation a decision was made in 1969 to produce the coin and to give up plans of issuing 50 pence notes. Only the government of the Isle of Man decided to issue 50 new pence notes.
I can’t begin to tell you how much this video is up my street. Cracking! Very well done - brought a smile to my face :)
One thing to say in an otherwise flawless video: the old-style £2 coin (non-bimetallic) is from 1986, not 1989 - as it commemorates the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.
My dad talked about old currency quite a bit, but I never understood it, until now.
This video was so informative and interesting, didn't even notice how much the time went by.
Very enjoyable trip back in time. Also worth mentioning that there was a debate about whether the system should actually keep the (old) penny and just decimalise from that (ie 100d = 1 pound).
My mum remembered all these. Whenever she mentioned prices before 1971 she would lose me completely. It made no sense.
Bewilderbeastie : I think you mean it made no sense to you. Subjective rather than objective. If people like your mother and tens of millions of others understood it quite easily it seems that your inability to understand it says more about you than it does about pre-decimal currency. Don't knock what you don't understand.
@@stevetaylor9846 you're an idiot..
People say "that makes no sense" to say it made no sense to them. Obviously it made sense to the person explaining it, just shut up
@@stevetaylor9846 its safe to assume that they mean subjectively. dont be a drama llama
'` : No. You're the idiot. People make subjective statements in the form of objective statements. Illogical - like you.
sulociou : It is by no means safe to make that assumption except according to your logic. And it's obvious where that lies, isn't it?
Always loved your simple and enjoyable content popping into my recommended!
I'm glad I was born in the 90s, can't imagine trying to use old currency like that would give me a headache.
Imagine having to learn long division Q: Divide £13 3s 63/4p by 254 Things I learned in primary school which I'll never do again :)
Clearest explanation of our currency I have seen. Should be required watching in all schools. I used to work in a slot machine arcade in the old currency, the weight of ten pound worth of pennies was amazing.
Same as the weight of £10's worth of tuppences apparently ;-)
I can imagine the nightmare of converting all those slot machines to handle the new decimal currency.
@@Tiqerboy Don't want to go through that again! The sad thing was that the pensioners could spend a whole morning going through £2 of old pennies but £2 of new ones took no time at all!
They stopped making “coppers” out of copper because the scrap metal yard would have paid out more than the bank.
This can be proved by running a magnet over the current 1p,2p and 5p coins.
When I was a kid I had family in Germany. Imagine my delight when I discovered the old five pence coin was exactly the same size and weight as a German Deutschmark which was worth considerably more than 5p. On my next visit I brought a big bag of 5ps and had a ball in the new video arcades
We did this too when my dad was stationed in Germany. The old 2 Pfennig was the same size as a sixpence but worth far less. So going to England we took a bag full of 2 pfennig coins and coming back to Germany we had a nice collection of shillings.
What a fine young con artist you were ! 😂
We still have pound notes in the Channel Islands and are forever having arguments with shop keepers in England whether or not they’re legal tender
Wow! It's a while since I visited Jersey. I recall one time, after the Bank of England had withdrawn our £1 notes, getting change in a Jersey café that included an old Bank of England £1 note, a Scottish £1 note, a Jersey £1 note and a £1 coin. Happy days...
You need those for strip clubs
Nothing other than Bank of England notes are "legal tender", but they do have the equivalent value so whether they're accepted or not is completely dependent on their local banking provider (some will refuse "foreign" notes due to the unfamiliarity with counterfeit detection for them). Almost all chains will be working with a major national bank and so refusal is set at the individual store for the same reason of counterfeit detection. Independent businesses, especially out of city-centres may be relying on smaller banks which simply won't accept the notes (our banking provider won't even accept Scottish notes due to a high amount of counterfeits some years back and they couldn't tell the difference). However, in general Jersey, Irish, Scottish & English banknotes can be treated as having the same value - the same is not true of the Gibraltar Pound. Gibraltar is not party to the same currency union and so its currency (although pegged at the same value on the market), will incur transaction/conversion fees if you wish to use it in the UK.
They aren't as the channel islands and the Isle of Man are not part of the UK but are Crown Dependencies
The Jersey Pound is neither legal tender, nor "legal currency" (approved and regulated by the UK parliament) in the UK. While their value is pegged to the UK Pound and the currency union allows electronic transfers to treat them interchangeably, the coins and notes themselves are effectively no different from foreign currency in the UK. If a shop in the UK accepts it, it's no different from the odd few shops in the South East or around tourist hotspots that accept Euros.
My earliest memory is of finding a half penny on the pavement and being allowed to spend it on whichever sweet I wanted in the newsagent, so I must have been... 3! Wow!
These are actually the same pounds, you can thank Thatcher and other tory thieves after her for that...
Did you get a giant Toblerone?
@@googlesucks7840 For ½p I probably got a cola bottle or foam shrimp.
@@greenisnotacreativecolour I remember 4 x Fruit Salad for 1p. I think a jublee was 3p
nobody bothers to pick up pennies laying in the street now, don't know who does because they are virtually worthless
This is one of the most interesting videos i have ever seen. I used to ask my dad about the pre decimal coins and he could never quite explain it in a way I could understand which you just did so a huge thank you!
"On second thought, let's not go into british coinage, 'tis a silly place."
cgp grey is dat u?
reigninoel - It’s only a model.
Red Pilled Fox
Even with the weird fractional denominations like €0.25, I doubt even the euro is silly enough to come out with thirds in a metric system. Can you imagine €0.33333333333333333333333333?
Excellent, and I love my collection of British coins because I find them so fascinating.
One thing you forgot to mention was the small 3d silver. I believe that's where the term thruppenny bit came from because the silver coin was so small, half the size of the sixpence. It was last minted in 1945 and circulated concurrently with the brass version you illustrated from 1937 to 1945. I'm guessing it was withdrawn because of the small size.
Brilliant, Sir! I was in my engineering apprenticeship at the time and travelled to work on the bus. For some time, Leeds City Transport buses accepted a mixture of both, rounding on the nearest penny.
Yes, that WAS very interesting. And I've learned something that I've often wondered about - the strike through on currency symbols. I had no idea that it was because the symbol was an abbreviation.
I haven't searched your channel for this, but have you done one of these on the Dollar, or any other currencies? Thanks for sharing
Regards Mark in the UK.
This is only so interesting as we didn't use decimal. All other currencies do and I think have since the start - they learnt from our idiocy. So a video on how a currency hasn't changed would not be all that interesting really....
@@adrianlbert6391 Australia was pre decimal and then decimal . And NZ. And probably most of the colonies.
This is the most informative video I've ever watched. I've never learned so much about our currency
This is fascinating! When I was in England a few years ago I actually somehow got hold of the old 5p coin and, noticing how much bigger it was than it should be, I wondered what was wrong with it. If it was fake or something. This was really interesting to watch, thank you.
They occasionally get mixed up with the new 10p coin as they're a similar size and same colour. When a shop gets handed a bunch of coins they're not looking closely enough to notice, same when they hand it to you by mistake in your change.
This reminds me of the Horrible Histories Terrible Tudors segment where a foreigner came in and asked for money and the Tudor guy said all this nonsense 😂
I remember that! It still confuses me
Minus the angels and groats
Omg yeah wth u read my mind wth
Lmao that was so funny
I genuinely replayed that segment 5 or 6 times in a row and still couldn't understand it 😂
I remember emptying my money box of old pennies as a child, taking them to the bank and getting these fabulous shiny new pennies, I felt like a millionaire :)
Now you regret that decision?
@@ghostdog4330 he was a child. you aren’t a banker. be quiet.
@@ghostdog4330 the hell?
@@swored. You're right I've deleted comment. I must have been drunk or something..
Although I was born 11 years after ‘decimal day’ I still as a child remember using florins and shillings as 5p and 10p. We had a few crowns, but as kids we had no idea what the value was. It might be a bit odd, but it’s one of my favourite memories 🙂
I used to be tickled by the fact that shillings and florins were still in circulation when I was a teenager in the eighties - sometimes you’d get a coin in your pocket that looked really old fashioned and was minted in the 1940s, which was like another age to me!
It’s a shame you mentioned Scottish bank notes, but not Northern Irish ones… the English seem to have a blind spot for these (I’m English but lived in NI for 22 years until 2019).
In New Zealand a shilling and a florin* were the same size and value as a ten cent and twenty cent coin. Australian florins were also the same size and approximate value, but they weren't always accepted in the arcade gaming machines.
Brilliant. I'm 42 years old and remember some of these coins but did not know much of this info. Really enjoyed that. Thanks!
That was fantastic! Answered many questions about coins that I've wondered about all my life. Also I never knew pound coins were such a relatively recent invention, introduced the year I was born!
Great video mate, I collect coins and I've learned a thing or two here about our own British currency. as a 34 year old, predecimalisation looks so alien and unwieldy :D I guess if we decimalised the clocks those who came after time decimalisation would think the same about us using Babylonian base-60 :D
This guy sounds like the teacher everyone liked.
sounds like the teacher who would find some excuse to touch the girl students
@@festusbojangles7027 your just a bit of a knob aren’t you
@@jackleatham2995 takes one to know one
This guy: *Trying to explain coins professionally*
Me: “Because two is bigger than one” *C:*
LMFAO
You have nice collection. Good thing the Uk didn't give up the pound when it joined the EU.
We'll probably have to make that concession when we rejoin in 10-20 years.
@@sunmustbedestroyed The new (post) Covid-19 currency all over the world will be : toilet paper
The UK never joined the EU. It joined the EEC which mutated itself into the EU years later.
Neil Williams Ignoring that, the Euro didn't even exist when we "joined"
@@sunmustbedestroyed The EU won't exist in 20 years time. Just look at this current crisis. The facade of "unity" fell away instantaneously. All EU nations immediately turned nationalist, closing their borders, disobeying Brussels in order to look after their own people. Now, we even have Italians burning the EU flag and saying "we'll save ourselves" , after Brussels fined Italy and then sent €20million in aid to Iran. Brussels is finished.
What a great vid to pop up in my feed. Found out loads of things about our currency I was unaware of, especially the hologram on the pound coin which was mind-blowing when I checked one!
Most TH-camrs: the cornvirus (misplled on purpose) sucks and stuff
Atomic shrimp:
rob yam dam Lol
@Redblade HE DID IT ON PURPOSE
Redblade oh the irony of your idiocy
I hadn't even noticed the 10p and 50p had shrunk, I thought I'd just got bigger! (Wagon Wheels are definitely smaller, though). I just about remember the old 5p's, and my granny had some half-new-pennies, but they weren't legal tender by the time I saw them. I think she had a few pre-decimal coins too. I also got hold of some Dutch coins from before Euroisation at my old work. They had a 1, 2 and 2.5 guilder.
Now I live in Japan, where a lot of things get left as they were built / made forever (you can tell houses were built in the 60's or 70's because of the patterns on the frosted glass, and the schools still seem to have the same floors and desks!), there's still a few vending machines proudly boasting they take the "new" 500 yen coin, it's older than me!
(also 100 and 50 yen coins look almost identical side-on, that's annoying)
I remember the 10p & 50p changing have still come across them in change relatively (within the last 5 years) recently. I'm too young to remember the 5p changing but I'm sure I've seen a couple in change some years back. Not recently, but I also remember getting old Penny's (mistaken for 2p?) in change with Victoria, Edward VII & George V on them! That pre-decimal Penny was the same for over 100 years so it's mad to think how old some of the coins in your change could be!
Yep... Wagon Wheels are much smaller... I recall they were the size of Morris Minor wheels... now they are the size of an old 10p coin! Unless my eyes shrank as I aged!
I was born in 1991 and I distinctly remember the £2 being introduced - I would have guessed it happened in the early noughties - but I never noticed the 50p shrink. As you say, I probably just put it down to growing bigger myself.
Thank you for including the year in the corner of the screen. It makes it so much easier to retain context as you walk through the changes. I wish more history channels did that kind of thing.
The channel that keeps on giving! Interesting and informative as always.
I honestly don’t care about this video, but it was actually quite interesting and wholesome lol.
This channel is definitely becoming one of my top channels- I like the randomness lol
+Miss Akame Why has the word wholesome accelerated in usage in the past year and is used for things that are not wholesome? It just feels like people throw it around for anything they like and that doesn't have violence and sex.
@@callumcowan7047 because mr funny actor keanu reeves said it and now its everyones new favourite word
@@callumcowan7047 It hasn't. You just have an axe to grind with it and as such have noticed when people use it more often than you would have otherwise.
This was so interesting!!! I love learning things like this as I remember the tail end of the change to decimal change, feeling old but strangely proud to be of a nation with an amazing history about its currency! There’s intelligence with the changes
Me: "I'll have an early night tonight"
Me at 6:51 am
oof I’m watching rn at 2:56am-
5:46
Thank you Atomic Shrimp for a trip down memory lane. I remember the changing steps and what life was like then and, in retrospect, appreciate the ingenious way it was neatly changed over. I still miss the sixpence though.
I've rarely been this confused in my life. But that's OK.
#justamericanthings
@@DingDingTheTH-camBuddy I like out colourful notes as opposed to your moss green bills. I also prefer our gold pound coins as opposed to the silver dollar. And the fact we don't have dead people on our coins. But anyway to each their own.
@@callumcowan7047 - when I was a boy in the 1960s we used to have dead people on our coins. We'd often find pennies and halfpennies in our pockets with Queen Victoria on them, and all the later monarchs (except Edward VIII).
OMG the '60s... when money was worth something. Five pounds seemed a fortune for little guys like me but I could happily start my plunge towards cavities and diabetes on a tanner (old sixpence)
Back in ye good ol’ days.
@Roger Dodger or sterling silver standard, in our case :p
I remember when 1p felt like a billionaire and that I could be Elon Musk in a week. Gud ol' dayz before da Smartphone gizmos
You know what. i turn 33 this year and i've always been clueless about the detail of pre-decimalisation. Thanks Shrimp.
Love being British, only this country can make currency confusing to the rest of the world 🤣
Hear, hear.
But it’s not confusing?
@@youunculturedswine264 Pretty sure we made it sensible when we joined the EU. I hope Brexiters are not now going to start demanding pre-decimal currency! 🤣
@@clairee4939 Didn't think of it till you mentioned it...
@@Otacatapetl What have I done! 🤦🏻♀️🤣
Can you please do a 1-pound daily budget for 7 days?
i know there's a pandemic going on, but after its all over, please do that as a video, i bet many people would want it
(make 1 video per day)
also, re-make the food you made on the original 1pound video with better ingridients and film it! i bet many people would like it! :)
TheDemonAngel28 yes!!
Or a 2000-pound daily budget for everyone's favourite princess?
Fun Fact! If you know anyone in the U.K. of a certain age, that indulges in a bit of the old “Mary Jane”, the chances are they’ve bought it from someone that uses 1p & 2p coins to weigh their “Devil’s lettuce”, using mechanical scales.
Despite decimalisation, us Brits like to hold on to old fashioned units (we measure our height in feet & inches, and our weight in pounds and stones), and one of these areas is the illicit trade of “wacky baccy”, which is bought in ounces, or rather fractions of an ounce. The most common amount is 1/8 of an ounce (just called an eighth), and converted into grams, that’s 3.54g, which is very close to the weight of a 1p coin (only a 0.02g difference, which is negligible). Because the actual weights that came with the scales are so small, they often got lost, but everyone has some pennies lying around, so these became de facto weight used to way people’s ganja, and seeing as two pennies weighs the same as the 2p, any combination can be used for larger quantities. 8p in any combination of 1p & 2p would be roughly 1 ounce, which is actually an advantage to the consumer, because they are actually getting a bit more, if only by a very small amount. An “ounce” weighed in pennies would be an extra 0.13g over an actual ounce.
Needless to say, I don’t condone any of these activities, just thought that was an interesting fact.
My parents have taught me this many times over the last 32 years, but this is the first time I've actually listened and learned.
I don't even know how I ended up here, but I don't regret clicking. 🤷♂️
Here’s a scary thought: My Grandmother bought her house in 1956, for £1400 imperial. She now lives in a residential home and the house sold for £180000 metric.
pedantry alert: the pound stayed the same pre and post decimalisation, the difference is just inflation and market gains, not imperial v metric :P
still, that kind of stuff is always wild! with inflation £1400 becomes £35k, so that's slightly over 5x increase from just real estate market increase! and it also spells out just how much more accessible permanent housing was to someone with a regular job back then, a mortgage down payment would be much easier to get on a £35k house than £180k, and paid off in many fewer years' wages. you can see the effect that's had on rent prices too, with all the various buy-to-let schemes, and people trying to claw back their mortgage before they want to retire.
having the ability to grow wealth in that way, and to pass it onto one's children if desired, can really make a difference to building up future generations (see the difference between ancestors of people who could access govt backed mortgages in the USA under the new deal, vs the ancestors of people who were blacklisted from those mortgages, even when they had the same wealth prior to the mortgage)
My colleagues and I discussed this point once, and when we factored in purchasing parity the wage:mortgage proportions were the same between "back in the day" (~1970s) and now
@@kaitlyn__L I know somebody who had his & his Dad's office just down the street from a chunk of land that had beat up old buildings on it, and they were offered the opportunity to buy it in the mid-70's for, I think, about GBP150k. They thought, well should we? and waffled about it for quite a while and then decided not to. Well, that same parcel in the mid 2000's went for several hundred million pounds, this friend told me with a laugh. Whoops.
@@RayJorg ouch!!
Fascinating look at our oddly changing currency but now it doesn't seem so odd - thanks Mr Shrimp :)
Oooo an Edwardian penny. Now this is my favourite channel. It's official.
When the old pound coin came up it was just like "remember this when you would get it from your mum and finally have enough money for that bubblegum drink you always got"
My pocket money was 50p. Enough for a copy of Whizzer and Chips and a Double Dip (Lick the swizzle stick and Dip)
@@error404m omg double dips. Now I want one 😂
I never got pocket money
I keep the old pound coins for vending machines as some of them, or at least the ones in my school, still accept old one pounds
@@tachi5408 nor did i its why i have problems managing money now i feel like since i never got it as a kid i have a habbit of spending it on stuff i could never have afforded when younger
Bonjour, I really enjoy your stuff, please carry on. What is even more shocking than the physical size of the pound coin is the fact that its value today is the same as the ’old money’ brass thrupney bit when it was first minted in 1936. This means a 1936 £ would be worth £80 today. Maybe that’s why it looks like it with its hexagonal shape... I’m 70 in 1971 when the thrupney bit went out of circulation a pint of bitter in London cost 2/6d (12 1/2 p in today's currency) - today it would set you back over £6 an increase of 48 fold in 50 years time, how mighty Britain has been bowed. Keep it up mate, great stuff.
As a Brit, the weirdest currency I have come across is that of Canada. There's nothing wrong with it - but the designs seem to be modeled on British currency, yet represent different denominations, and dollars rather than pounds. What was even weirder was- at the time I visited- the values they represented were actually very similar to their values in GBP when converted... I can't recall the exact values, but as an example I believe the Canadian quarter was the same shape as a 10p coin - but I'll have to quickly check this.
Both the American and Canadian dollars are based on the old Spanish silver dollar.
Canadian and US coins are so similar, we often get them mixed up in our change, pennies especially.
@@SuperSMT Canada doesn't have a penny.
@@davidd7940 I don't think the Spanish called it a dollar. Pieces of eight was the coin. Then if you needed change, you'd break it in half or quarters. Today, the quarter is also called "two bits", which is a quarter of a piece of eight!
@Thomas Jefferson .. You sound pretty confident for someone who hasn't visited Canada in the last 7 years. The penny was eliminated in 2013; they don't make them anymore.
Next, I bet you're going to tell me that a nickle is made from nickle??
As clear as...
Well, no. I'm even more confused
as a kid growing up in the 60's all i remember thinking was that one of my favourite sweets "The penny Arrow" would more than double in price
What a great video, I learned a thing or 2
The 2p is the same size and weighs the same as a gold sovereign. Which is a quarter of a Troy Oz of gold. 1p is identical to a half sovereign. 1/8th of an oz
Now you’ve gone up in my estimation even further 😂
I love old coins and notes, and this was well presented, clearly explained and done by someone obviously loving and respecting their coins. Well done!
👏👏👏
All those complications make my head spin. I think I'd need to play this back twenty or thirty times to get it all straight. And three different Scottish 'banks' issuing pound notes? Once again a great video by Mr. Shrimp.
You can’t fool me. Nobody REALLY asked why the 2p coin was bigger; you made that up so you’d have an excuse to flex your coin collection and superior knowledge on British currency history.
Is this a complaint?
Little bit, yeah, but we're all stuck indoors now, so...
Can't believe I missed this when it came out. Thank you so much. This clueless Yank, has always wanted to know more about this currency. Great video once again!
I have no idea why this popped into my suggested videos, but I'm glad it did 👍
Very fascinating and I'm so glad I was born shortly after decimalisation... pre-decimal looked very confusing - and even after watching this, it's still very confusing!
Nice
2:07 florens and crowns are a type of coin currency in "the witcher" universe
They were common terms for currency in a lot of places in the medieval era, so it's not unexpected that a fictional medieval universe might borrow them.
Pretty sure real life stole it from the witcher
This video has sparked a genuine curiosity about currency for me - thank you! Gives me something to look into during the current quarantine.
very interesting, love hearing about the history of currencies
Loved the video! I world love a follow up describing the modern currency back notes from 1960 to modern day too!
Random person: why is the 2 pence coin bigger than the pound one?
Atomic shrimp: *inhales*
In the UK, for anything strange it's either "just how it is, ennit?" or there's an law passed in 1123 that has never been rescinded otherwise it will somehow randomly cause the disillusion of the country, so it has to stay one the books as well as it's sub-clause prohibiting the keeping of weasels and hawks in the same building.
Imagine the coin sorting system in a British vending machine from the 70s
I remember when the £1 note transitioned to the coin, in fact, there were 4 different designs representing England, Scotland, Wales, and N. Ireland. Also remember when Scotland notes came out, was gob smacked but was glad because it was kinda hard keeping those pound coins in your pocket. Not bad for an American. Eh!