Americans First Time Seeing British Pounds
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 เม.ย. 2022
- In this video, my wife and I as some random American couple check out British Pounds for the first time! We also compare it to the USD, watch the video to see which one we like better, and tell us in the comments which you think is better.
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#Currency #Pounds #UKversusUS
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The coin you held up against the two dollar bill was actually a 2p coin, your equivalent of 2 cents, a £2 coin is quite large and bi-coloured both gold and silver and, if someone says that's £1.99 and you give then a 2p coin they'll think you're having a laugh 😂👍
Except that £1 $1 - but, putting exchange rates to one side, it’s the approximate equivalent!
Just as well we are now using decimal currency - under the pre-decimal system, every twelve pence was a shilling - the lowercase letter d stood for pence (lira, soldi and denarii) - the new p took some getting used to, though base 10 works better than base 12 - 240d was £1 - now it’s 100p - you also had half a crown - two of which made up a dollar - don’t ask precisely what I mean - there used to be a ten shilling note - a shilling was called a bob - nowadays, the lowest value note is a fiver!
Old silver sixpences (tanners) were legal tender almost into the 80s - but they weren’t 6p - 6d was not 6d - they were two-and-a-half pence in one coin - two sixpences = 5p! 6 + 6 = 5?
JMW Turner was a painter - I think he painted landscapes!
As to the coins - pre-decimal ones looked like pirate treasure or doubloons or something like that- even the early decimal coins were about double the size they are now - oddly enough, size-wise, the 2p coin was bigger than the 5p one - over the years, the coins have been re-minted, so they are smaller - an absolute nightmare for the manufacturers of slot machines, video game machines in amusement arcades, pinball machines, pool tables, snooker tables (for the overhead lights), jukeboxes, vending machines - all of which had to be tinkered with to take the new coins - either that or have some old ones handy behind the bar - some manufacturers of vending machines invented special tokens that you bought from somewhere in the venue and you put the tokens in the machine and pressed the button that corresponded with the snack or drink of choice!
@@bigfrankfraser1391 No they said that the equivalent of 2p is 2¢
I loved that!
Dont listen to these lies
Ill exchange your 2 dollar coins for your dollar bills
😂
@@arthurvasey It was much easier to make change with the 12-240d because of the many combinations of coins that could be used. It really doesn't matter though considering that metal money is pretty much worthless compared to paper, or in this case plastic. The US bill currency is actually cloth, a linen and cotton blend.
The different sizes help blind people. The coins also have different tactile feels to them and have a memorable pattern (1p is small and smooth, 2p is large and smooth, 5p is small with ridges, 10p is large with ridges, 20p is small and non-circular, 50p is large and non-circular, £1 is small and thick, £2 is large and thick).
American money being the same size and colour and tactile feel must be really awful for the visually impaired. It's one of the things I like about UK/EU money.
The different sizes help everyone. As do the sizes/styles of coins. How I know? Because those differences (not the actual styles, they changed) in size are old, decades old, from before the time we mandated (and it's good we did, don't get me wrong) everything be accessible.
@ you ever see the movie my cousin vinny? the bit where he says "how do i know you dont just have a roll of 1's wrapped in a 100?". probably a pretty common scam in the US, couldnt do that with english money
@ They've also got smaller each time redesigned, I can just remember the old white fiver, although out of circulation by then, it was about A5 in size maybe slightly larger. When the blue fiver came in along with a ten pound note they were the largest denomination notes in circulation at the time. We then had four bank notes, 10 shilling (50p), one pound, five and ten pound. Scotland, N.I., Jersey, Guernsey and the I.O.M. held onto their pound note well after the pound coin came in.
I'm from the UK but now live in mainland Europe.. you can definitely see why coins are so different, I hate euros when its comes to coins, all round and basically the same colour.. but its 2022 so I use cards anyway
I'm not blind, but I took for granted being able to count my change, in my pocket, without taking it out. Then I went to Canada and found it hard to tell the coins apart by sight!
Mixing up pennys and pounds is so funny. Imagine you’re a cashier and you’re handed 2p (£0.02) for something that costs £2.
So in Britain, we have from smallest to biggest, 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, and then we have the £1 coin and the £2 coin (not to be confused with the 1p coin and 2p coin lol). The £1 coin was recently changed to be 12 sided, rather than a perfect circle, to make it harder to counterfeit. And yes, the 50p coin is very common over here, while the £50 note, you'll rarely see.
"pence" is plural of "penny". Your equivalent would be "cents" or "cent". The (approximate) equivalent of the $1 bill would be the £1 coin. We used to have £1 notes, but they were replaced by the first (circular) £1 coin in the 1980s, and that was then replaced by the new (12-sided) £1 coin a few years ago.
Have to disagree with Angela - the fact that all the bills are the same size (and colour) is something that I particularly dislike about American money. I keep notes (bills) in my wallet in denomination order, with the highest-value ones at the back, so with the higher-denomination ones being taller, it's easy to see where the transitions are.
No, there are not chips in the money. There are metallic sections as an anti-counterfeiting device.
"I promise to pay the bearer on demand..." is the basis of fiat currency. Basically, the note itself is fundamentally worthless, it's just an IOU. The Bank of England technically promises to pay the note's face value to whoever presents it at the bank.
JMW Turner was a famous English painter, known particularly for atmospheric landscapes. His name was given to the annual "Turner Prize" for art.
Yes, 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1 and £2 coins are in common circulation, although £2 coins are less common. The £5 coin exists, but is not in common circulation.
Another thing to note is that the 2p coin (which you missed) is sized such that it is twice the weight of a 1p coin, and similarly for 5p and 10p coins. Therefore, you can weigh a mixture of 1p and 2p coins (or 5p and 10p coins) to ascertain their value without having to sort them.
We also used to have ten shilling (50p) notes. Little scruffy brown jobs.
I think they had a 2p coin but thought it was £2.
@@markj66 They did as they said in the video " I think the 2p is what would be £2 which would b e equivalent to our 2 dollar bill"
@@sarahelliott3095 Ah, I missed that, as I must have been writing other parts of the comment at a time :)
also the thing with the size helps visually impaired people alot, yes there is braill but also size matters ;)
Hi guys, great video as per usual. The 2 pence bronze coin is equivalent to 2 pennies not 2 dollars. We also have a one pound coin and a two pound coin, that you don’t appear to have, but will see lots of. We tend to use the smaller denominations ( I can’t remember the last time I saw a fifty pound note), so don’t be shocked if that’s the only fifty you see.
Yes, don't confuse pence with pound.
@@ivylasangrienta6093 That would garner some funny responses
Imagine them going into a shop with 1p trying to buy something for a quid
Lots of shops won't accept £50 notes; they are popular with counterfeiters and the notes are considered 'drugs related'!
Don't forget the £5 coin
You were correct about the reason for money sizes being different. Visually impaired people can tell by touch what note or coin they're handling.
Over the years a few of our coins got redesigned because their size/shape was too close to other coins.
I'm not visually impaired but can identify each note & coin with my eyes shut, it's a very good system
Canada also has polymer bank notes that are similar to UK notes but are of equal size. We differentiate for sight impairment
with braille at the upper left corner.
@@evelynmacmillan2485 That got me curious so I checked some notes. For a second I thought I'd found some brail on our notes but the few bumps are exactly the same on different denominations.
It appears that size is the only aid for visually impaired people here.
Why the strange smell from USA Bank notes
@@missyprime8198 If you look at the bumps on the various notes, You will find that the £5 note has no bumps, £10 note has 2 lots of 4 bumps and the £20 note has 3 lots of bumps. This is to help blind and partially sighted people. I am blind myself and because of these bumps I find money a lot easier to handle than it used to be.
The different sizes are also an anti counterfeiting measure. It means you can't "wash" the bills, which you can do with dollars.
Yes, the 50p is in common circulation. For some reason it is one of the coins I most commonly use personally.
When i was worked in retail we had lots of 50p some time i had to give people £3- £4 pounds in 50p.
I know I see 50p coins all the time very common
Useful to put in machines to put air in your tyres.
Yeah all of the UK coins are widely in circulation. Although the £50 notes are quite rare to be handed one unless you're drawing a substantial amount of money from inside a bank as they're not dispensed from ATM . Many small shops won't accept £50 notes, not sure why, maybe loads of forgeries at one point ?.
@@Mat0305 £50 notes are a huge loss if you accept a fake one.
When I used to visit the USA twice a year I was shocked at how easy it was to get the notes mixed up due to them all being the same size & colour. You really have to look at them carefully to make sure you don't give someone a $20 bill instead of a lower denomination. I have no idea how blind people cope with it. It is a shame that you didn't have all the coins because you would notice how different they were from each othet in size, shape and weight. Again, this is for the benefit of the blind. When you visit us here in the UK you will also realize that you don't have to add tax onto the price of items in the shops because it's already done. What you see on the price tag is what you pay. Great reaction, albeit a bit frantic.
Pence is simply the plural of penny and equivalent to your cents and penny. So two pence (2p) is just two pennies, not equivalent to two dollars.
There are also one and two pound (£1 and £2) coins, which are equivalent to your one and two dollar bills.
And bill (US) = note (UK). So we say a five pound note.
Hope that helps.
Cool fact: combining one of each UK coin (1p,2p,5p,10p,20pand50p) creates a coat of arms.
The guy on the back of the £20 note, Joseph Mallard William Turner (Usually abbreviated to JMW Turner) was a 19th century painter, who is widely considered to be one of the greatest artists Britain has ever produced. The ship visible behind him on the note is the HMS Temeraire, which was the subject of a painting by Turner called The Fighting Temeraire - voted as Britain's favourite painting in a BBC poll a few years ago (it's also the painting that James Bond discusses with Q when they meet for the first time in Skyfall).
There's a movie about him too called Mr Turner, starring Timothy Spall. It is, even amongst Brits, a film where subtitles are a must.
And of course, the Turner Prize was named after him
My favourite painting
Turner is considered by some to be the first English Impressionist style painter and its suggested he influenced the French Impressionists as they were aware of him and would have seen his work when they visited in London. Don't know how true it is.
The reason why few Americans are aware of Turner or his Paintings is there are very few paintings in America of Turners and they are in museums. This is because on his death Turner bequeathed all his paintings to the country, so few were sold abroad before his death.
If you want to be really technical and nerdy, the ship depicted wasn't HMS any more as she had been de-commisioned and sold for scrap. She is being towed to her to her destruction - in reality she would not have had masts in place by this time.
Euro bills are also different sizes and colours and quite honestly, it's one of the best things about them. We don't usually hold our bills in our hands, they are in our wallets until we use them to pay... and if you open up a wallet, we can easily spot every bank note in there simply because they "stack" in size. If you place a €50, €20, €10 and €5 in order (large to small), you can see in an instant without flicking through the bills that you have €85. If you do the same with $85 you have to look at each individual bill to know how much you have in total simply because you can't tell from a distance. Open up an EU/UK wallet and you immediatly see which bills you have in there. If you really want to hold money in your hands, fold the stack in half (like we usually do without even thinking about it), or use your thumb to pinch the stack of bills from the front and back instead of sideways :)
Size and color… as many indicators as possible, that's a rule of UIs (and this is a user interface).
The reason they're different sizes, is really to aid the blind.
@@marshalldonaghy4542 Yep. It is the entire point behind having different sized bills.
And they are a good design for blind people in size and because of the braille types
When you do visit England don't take London as all of England ( they are not all locals) I would checkout other parts of UK
So sweet thinking that 2p is the equivalent of £2 🥰
I wish. I've got a bucket full of the stuff 👍🏻🏴
2p is two pennies .
It's actually hilarious tbh.
😂 😂
@@weekendwarriorprospecting817 🤣🤣🤣
Originally our paper notes also had the size scale for sight impaired, but the new notes also having the braille like dotes, such a thoughtful feature to add.
End of next month the last paper £20 and £50 notes go out of circulation so we'll be completely polymer.
Being British I found American notes hard work, if I didn't put them in order of value I couldn't figure what was which. Our plastic notes are far easier to count at the end of a work day, and last longer,
Afternoon all.
The big reason why British notes are all different sizes is to help blind individuals more easily differentiate between note. Same reason that certain parts of the notes are raised (lightly run your thumb over the part that reads "Bank of England".
Quick tip for when you get over here. Remember the difference between the penny & the pound (cents & dollars). Coins tend to be pennys (cents), (£1 & £2 being the main 2 exceptions), Notes are pounds
Edit: visually impaired, rather than blind. My apologies for my slip up there
blind people 😂....they have braille on them
The size difference is not for blind people, the Braille is. The raised letterings aren't for blind people either, they are anti-counterfeit measures. As stated by the Royal Mint, the main reason for continued size difference between denominations is for continuity and note detecting inside machines.
@@christiananderson8686 Before the introduction of the plastic notes with braille the size differences between the paper notes was how blind people could tell the different notes.
@@Thurgosh_OG I know, but it's not the reason they're different sizes any more. The Braille solved that problem. Like I said, the reason now with our new notes is for continuity and technology. We were talking about why the notes ARE different sizes, not why they WERE different sizes.
@@glastonbury4304 oops, thought I'd put that above. Please feel free to mock & ridicule the dunce (me) ☺️😁
The milling round the edge of coins is a hangover from coins made out of silver - it stops people shaving the coins.
Hence the £1 coins that say “decus et tutamen” on them: Latin for “an ornament and a safeguard”.
You do need to be aware that the UK has become almost cashless since Covid - most people use debit cards or phone apps even for small sums. Cash is still accepted everywhere so don't worry! It might have been interesting to compare values too: as of just now, the US dollar is worth 77 pence.
It's .80 now lol
Almost cashless? Not really.
@@frankabagnale6436 I almost never use cash except for charity boxes and buying the odd item under about £2. Today used my card going on the bus to a hospital appointment - normally I'd walk but it was raining - for a £2 fare.
I almost always use cash save for Internet purchases. I consider it far easier to realise how you are spending as time goes on, and wonder if those wanting to avoid cash realise the mistakes they're making. In any case, cash use is going back up now the Covid insanity has mostly faded.
MY cash was actually denied by Webbs of Wychbold in the UK
Something important that hasn't been mentioned is that Bank of England aren't the only Sterling notes. For example I'm in Northern Ireland and we use BoE notes but also Ulster Bank, Bank of Ireland, First Trust etc. Scotland have their notes too (im unsure about Wales) all are sterling notes but just issued by different banks.
Wales uses the same notes as England... all the notes in the UK are legal tender throughout... I loved watching the confusion on a face of an English cashier when handing over Northern Ireland and Scottish notes to pay for something! :D
@@markhutton6824 Bank of England notes are only legal tender in England and Wales (and the Channel Islands and Isle of Man). Scottish and Northern Irish notes are legal currency throughout the UK (as are Bank of England notes in Scotland and Northern Ireland), but they are not legal tender. Manx and Channel Island notes are legal tender where they're issued, along with Bank of England notes, but aren't legal currency in the UK.
The reason - Only English law requires "legal tender" to be accepted on the repayment of a debt. Scots and, I assume, Northern Irish law, allows for any reasonable method of payment to be accepted, so doesn't require any notes to be legal tender.
@@markhutton6824 it's a pity they quite frequently refuse Scottish notes.
When I moved to the UK first I had all my cash in Scottish pounds and couldn't use them anywhere, had to go to the bank to exchange it all to English notes. 😒
@@markhutton6824 yeah, the only problem I've had using Scottish notes in England was in Newcastle!
@@markhutton6824 the uk doesn’t have an actual legal tender currency. Shops can take anything in payment or refuse any currency.
I am aware of the £50 note, but have never ever had one issued to me. If I was withdrawing a significant sum from the Bank I could ask for it to be in £50 notes, but generally speaking you don’t see them in general usage, at least where I live. The £20 note is the ‘go to’ high value Note in most people’s wallet.
Yep, I haven't seen a £50 note in decades and I think then it was only once.
Do you live further north, Patricia? We rarely see them in Newcastle.
I use £50 notes for some large second hand cash purchases.
If you take over £1000 cash from the bank, they offer £50s.
Scotland have £100 notes too.
In genral ones u get that much you either use card or apple pay now days
In the UK we are more of a digital cash system, using debit cards (checking account equivalent), and credit cards.
We also use contactless payment from mobile phones or smart watches, available on Android or Apple devices.
I personally very rarely have physical cash.
This. I haven't used cash for a couple of years now. Rarely a problem. In the odd case where I need some most places will do cashback
Work sandwich van and window cleaner all cash less now.....
This is correct, the UK is 'mostly' digital cash / debit card system. However, that is mainly in our day-to-day lives, where we frequent known shops and locations that we already know accept such payment. However, I think that even as a Brit, if I were planning on a round the country holiday, I would also make sure to bring some cash as a backup too, or at least stop on the way to my destination to make a withdrawal from any of the numerous ATMs spread throughout the country. That's the one good thing, there's usually an ATM not far away, if you really need it.
i only use money always have always will
We can use contacless from 1p to £100, after so many contacless transactions you have to put your pin in.
Sorry if this has been answered already, but the 20 pence shapes is a Heptagon and the newer coins have a fragment of the coat of arms on it so if you have all of them and place them just right it will complete the coat of arms. I personally thought it was cool lol
It's also worth remembering that dollars and pounds aren't exactly equivalent in value.
Currently, £1 is worth about $1.30.
The Euro is closer in value to the US dollar. €1 is worth $1.08
It's not really 'worth remembering' if they're only in the UK for 2 weeks.
@@MoanaOnCrack whether it matters to THEM on THIS trip isn't the point.
They're comparing and contrasting currencies, and giving anyone watching the impression that e.g. the Bank of England £10 note is the equivalent of the US $10 bill.
UK pounds and US dollars AREN'T equivalent in value, which might very well be important for many of their VIEWERS to realise
Also, an obvious experience they will have on their trip is to compare the apparent costs of various items & services on both sides of the pond, when those different values become very significant
@@MoanaOnCrack well I think it is important as could get confusing
@@heidihorler6963 Not really all the prices are shown in shops just give them the amount asked for there's no need to get technical and this Robert wanker is just having a hissy fit
The Bank of England was founded in 1694, the first central bank in the world, not the first to print money. They were the first to print government authorised money in payment of government debt. The size of the notes produced has consistently reduced over the centuries, as has the value! Have a great trip guys.
Nope, The Swedish Central Bank is the first and oldest (1668)
@@zpitzer wrong! it is largely documented the bank of England was the first EVER to print money. i am american and even know this.
@@zpitzer In 1695 the Bank of England was the
first to initiate the permanent issue of
banknotes. Initially, these banknotes
were handwritten but by 1745,
standardized printed notes ranging
from £20 to £1,000 were being
printed. In 1862 the United States
issued their first one-dollar bill in
order to make up for coin shortage
and to finance the Civil War.
@@SiGr10614 I wasn't talking about bank notes.
@@zpitzer Thanks. I bow to your superior knowledge. I reckon though that my underlying point is still valid!
That was funny, watching you two constantly taking the money from each other. Its mine, no mine, no mine. LOL.
The thickness of the coins is quite important. They are designed so that a 2p is exactly twice the weight of a 1p and a 10p is twice the weight of a 5p. So they can be weighed together to allow them to be counted quicker in shops and banks
And what about the 20p
Just so you know, if you take a £50 note into a shop the shop assistant normally has to get their manager to check over it before accepting it. There's been issues of fraudsters attempting to remake them for a number of years so don't be offended if you come across this, just go with the flow 😊
It's great to see people pushing their boundaries and trying something new. I hope you enjoy my country (UK) when you get there!
Your country lol
I'm leaving this comment to stop the inevitable Christopher Columbus who's bound to stop by and say "the uk isn't a country"
@@thatsthat2612 but the uk isn’t a country tho
Srry I just had to
Heh, thanks @@thatsthat2612. Much appreciated. To confirm, I live in West Yorkshire, within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. :-)
Your gonna be really confused when you discover Scotland has three different £100.00 notes 😂😂
And more so when it reads bank of Scotland on it 🤣🤣
Or even see a single Scottish £100 note. I’ve spotted more rocking horse droppings. 🤣🤣🤣
they need a £1 note too. we still have them in Scotland.
@@stevenredpath9332 I bought a car with them one time.
@@skellious I’ve got family up near the border so have seen Scottish notes but I didn’t even know that they had a £100 note until I read that comment. I hope it was a reliable motor. To quote madness “not quite a jaguar”?
The 50p, 10p, 5p and 2p used to be bigger. When I was young there were still one and two shilling coins which were interchangeable with the 5p and 10p. We've introduced £1 and £2 coins because they last longer than paper money. The £1 had a major redesign recently over to the bimetal version.
The 2p hasn't changed since its introduction in 1971
When I was a kid the 10 bob coin would kill a man if you threw it at him
Indeed. We used to have to take a wheelbarrow to the shops if we were expecting to get any 50p coins in our change.
@@TimMiller they should phase out the bronze 1 and 2 ps now.
It's worth noting that they have different note designs in Scotland and also Northern Ireland I believe. There's also technically a £100 Scottish note that's legal tender but I've never seen it myself.
This was worth watching just because it's the first time I've ever seen the new £50 note. The only time you ever see them is with tourists who've been stiffed with them and then no shops will accept them - best to change them at a bank. I even once took out £1000 in cash to change to travel money because you got a better deal if you did it in cash, and even then the bank gave me £20 notes not £50 notes!
I've only ever seen one £50 note. It was the week after they were first issued. I was working in a shop after leaving school and at 6am a man came in to buy a pack of cigarettes. The cigarettes were 34p, he was the first customer of the day, I had a float of £30 , so I had to refuse. He was really annoyed, but hey ho.
I'd say that shops not accepting £50 banknotes is a thing of the past. They certainly carry out extra checks on them before accepting them, but based on my experience, seeing £50 notes is becoming more and more normal with the passing of time.
@@nmejias370 The way things are going £50 notes will be counted as small change.
Shops will probably accept them if you are buying nearly or over £50 worth. The problem happens when some idiot thinks they can buy a Mars bar with a fifty pound note. The till probably doesn't have £50 in change. I don't see why a supermarket wouldn't accept a fifty. As long as you aren't taking the p*ss there should be no problem.
@@gilgameshofuruk4060 That's inflation for you. I see a time when our current coins will be phased out because they are all but worthless. The pound will probably end up like the old Spanish money where 100pt is the smallest coin(they had smaller but no one used them). The smallest coin will be 1 pound, then 2, then 5, then 10, then 20, then 50, then 100 with 500 being the smallest banknote. Yeah, I can see this happening within my lifetime.
I love seeing how enthusiastic and excited you are about your coming trip. I really hope it lives up to or exceeds your expectations.
Most of the features of modern pound notes are either accessibility/qualify of life features to make them more durable and easy to use and recognise, or to prevent fraud. It used to be that, when dealing with cash at my casino, we'd have to mark bills with a pen to tell if they're fake, which leads to a lot of false negatives slipping through, or holding them under a black light to check for hallmarks, which is slow and cumbersome when you're dealing with bulk. The hologram windows are part of this, but the notes also have serial numbers, watermarks, UV activated ink - all the bells and whistles when it comes to making it harder to forge them.
Alan Turing on the £50 note is fairly recent, I remember a few years ago we got to vote on it, of course as a gay man who is a computer scientist I voted for Alan Turing, and I'm so happy he won! For what he did for the country during WW2 and how he was treated was aweful! It's not much, but at least it's continuing his legacy!
I just watched the movie about him, I liked it 😁
I feel so ashamed of our ancestors. But then I realise that if I had lived in that same culture I would have been similarly brainwashed and might have been just as afraid and hateful. I'm so glad I live in more enlightened times. And so glad that you do, too. And also my son. God protect you both.
I think it’s slightly insulting that they put him on the £50, a bill that isn’t widely accepted in shops.
He should’ve been on another, more common, bill
He also won the BBC 2019 vote as the greatest person of the 20th century.
@@joshuaaaron125 True it would have been cooler for him to have been on one of the more commonly seen notes, but it's still really cool that he's visible and celebrated.
Lovely to see you looking at our currency. Here in the UK the £50 note, isn’t very widely used and a lot of smaller shops etc will not accept them. Try and use any £50 notes that you have in larger shops etc. I hope you have a great time.
@Matty I sure HMRC would be interested in getting to know you.
@Matty Clearly there was some reason why you chose to not do the obvious thing of taking them to the bank to change…
😉
The primary users of £50 notes are drug dealers and money launderers; they don't get a lot of day to day use by normal people.
@Matty This ^ ^ ^
Small shops only tend to reject them if they have to make change. If your total spend is over £50 you wont get rejected unlesss its a kid who's never seen one before, and they dont have a senior staff person to call over to verify it.
I work in a casino, so I see 50s on the regular. Whenever I do, I will often say "good old Al Turing", seeing as he was, like me, both autistic and queer. Him getting that spot on the 50 note was a long time coming.
One interesting place to visit in London is the Bank of England museum. Amongst the things on show are the evolution of British currency and the security on the notes. There's a real gold ingot that you are invited to attempt to lift. It's held quite securely.
We do actually have a £100 note but it's very rarely used, plus we also have £5, £20, £50 and £100 coins which are classed as commemorative coins to be collected but are still legal tender
And FYI - Modern polymer banknotes were first developed by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and The University of Melbourne. They were first issued as currency in Australia during 1988 (coinciding with Australia's bicentennial year); by 1996, the Australian dollar was switched completely to polymer banknotes. Romania was the first country in Europe to issue a plastic note in 1999 and became the third country after Australia and New Zealand to fully convert to polymer by 2003.
Other currencies that have been switched completely to polymer banknotes include: the Vietnamese đồng (2006) although this is only applied to banknotes with denominations above 10,000 đồng, the Brunei dollar (2006), the Nigerian Naira (2007), the Papua New Guinean kina (2008), the Canadian dollar (2013), the Maldivian rufiyaa (2017), the Mauritanian ouguiya (2017), the Nicaraguan córdoba (2017), the Vanuatu vatu (2017), the Eastern Caribbean dollar (2019) and the Pound sterling (2021).
The reason for the different sized notes is so that blind people know what they’re handling. Same with the strong colour difference between the notes. It’s so that visually impaired people can make a distinction between the different notes. Same with the coins regarding size.
Word to the wise; many places are still reluctant to handle cash due to COVID. They prefer digital payments but will probably take cash if there’s no alternative.
Everyone is visually impaired if the light is bad… in a club for example. Or any other not-absolutely-blindingly-brightly-lighted venue.
You all claim this blind people thing, but I don't expect anyone to actually provide proof.
I think American cards have a bit of an issue outside of America. We use tap or chip&pin but there's something weird about American cards... they're not as handy. My brother-in-law is from Buffalo and my dad moved to American yearrrrs ago and they explained it to me but I can't remember sorry ha
@ You can't see the proof. You're blind to the proof.
@ Proof of what? That having different size notes makes it easier for blind people to handle money? I would have thought that was blindingly obvious.
@ Proof ! , they have braille on them .
Be careful in the uk when spending a 50. They can be quite unusual and high value. Some places may not take them or won’t want to give you change on a small item. I would pay by card as much as possible and just keep a small amount of cash.
AGREE but be careful on exchange rates and charges. When in Europe, there can be a significant difference paying for product etc on card, all in the conversion applied to the currency and the card. You need to check wherein the transaction the currency is changed, at what rate and the cost applied for changing it, THEN compare cards. It was best in EU to use a debit card and be charged in local currency. The exchange rates elsewhere can be very expensive.
@@cliffsinclair4900 yes I agree. That's good advice. We have used a card designed for travel, when we have been in mainland Europe, Canada and the USA. It's worked well - revolut. (I'm not linked to it in any way!)
Agree. £50 notes are rarely seen and will often be treated with suspicion so don’t take loads. £20 notes are much more common. Lots of places are still cashless and many places would prefer you to pay by card than pay for something small with a large note, i.e. try not to use a note that is more than twice the cost of the item. Smaller shops will often not like giving that much change. £1, £2 and 50p coins are very commonly used but don’t get pounds and pence mixed up! 1, 2 and 5p coins are annoying bits of change. £1 coins are very useful and common. They are easy to spot and quite chunky so easy to identify. You need £1 coins for supermarket shopping trollies (carts).
@@kathpearson8966 some small shop transactions are now beginning to request cash for small amounts they find it easier
@@kathpearson8966 British banknotes, well they are English banknotes but British as well, 3 countries in the UK make bank notes which are Scotland, England and Northern Ireland and are all Polymer Plastic, Scottish bank notes is not legal tender but if Scotland became independent and had it's own currency, then it would be legal tender, Scotland still has £100 notes, here is a video I made about the Scottish bank notes which can be used anywhere in the UK th-cam.com/video/zxVH_dtac5s/w-d-xo.html
Although "Pence" is the correct term, almost no one in the UK says Pence, we just use the letter P.
So it would be 1p (1 Pee), 2p (2 Pee) etc.
Pounds and Quid are usually interchangeable in conversation, like Dollars and Bucks in the US.
I'd call a 1p coin a penny still. Think a lot of people would. I'd say it was a "penny" or a "1p coin"
@@cbjones82 for the 1p, penny can be used like in the US. I was commenting on the common language usuage of all Pence coins in Britain, which would be "P" rather than Pence. You could use P for the 1p, but you wouldn't use "penny" when using any coin higher than 1p (some "may" say a 2 penny coin...but I wouldn't say it's common place).
@@HanOfGod13 I say 20p now. In retail years ago I'd ask the customer for 20 pence. I use them now interchangeably
Penny is singular. So 1 penny. Pence is plural. So 2 pence.
I think I'm old enough to know why. Back in 1971 when I was a child we changed our system of money from a complicated combination of pounds, shillings and pence to just having pounds and pence. Under the old system the abbreviation for a penny was the letter 'd' (something to do with latin I think) so ten pence would be written 10d. With the new money the abbreviation for penny changed to 'p' so ten pence became 10p. As the values also changed 10d was not worth the same as 10p so when talking about money in the early days of the change over it became common to call the new pennies 'pee' to make it clear you meant new pence. In fact, I can also recall people saying, for example, 'twenty new pence'. Obviously, 20 pee is easier to say. For some reason this habit stuck. I've always found it to sound a bit silly and often use the words penny and pence myself. But that might be my age.
We used to have a £1 note years ago but they were switched out to a coin instead, also the plastic bills are relatively new our notes used to be more papery.
You'll have such fun in Scotland as there are 3 different banks printing their own Scottish-themed banknotes.
The Scottish banks issue notes in denominations of £5, £10, £20, £50 and £100. Only the Royal Bank of Scotland continues to issue a small volume of £1 notes.
Northern Ireland, Channel islands and the Isle of Man also print their own bank notes.
@@peterbrown1012 And Gibraltar
@@reverendnumbnuts1857 trouble is that it looks identical to British currency but is not legal tender in the UK, I got caught out at Asda when the cashier handed me back a Guernsey £2 Coin, emailed the Bank of England and they said buisnessess didn't have accept non UK currency.
@@peterbrown1012 Technically the last two are 'crown dependencies', not part of the United Kingdom with their own governments and laws, although their monarch is also the Queen, titled as the Lord of Mann in the Isle of Man and The Duke of Normandy in the Channel Islands.
I never would have thought that a video about comparing foreign currency could be so chaotic. In a good way, of course. You guys always have great banter and Angela dropping her "facts" as Ethan swiftly debunked them cracked me up! Hope your travel preparations are going well.
The people on the back of British notes are changed every decade or so, personally I think it's great that they feature a diverse range of people and not just a bunch of dead politicians. Also the backs of our coins often have 'limited editions' to commemorate things like the Olympic Games or historical events, some of these are only issued in very small amounts and can become more valuable than the face value.
I'm british and i have never seen a polymer £50 note until now!!! :D Also 50p coins are widely circulated and used in the UK, and the 50p have the widest variety of designs on their reverse than any other coin by far! Quite a few are commemorative but all are still legal tender apart from the older 50p coins made before 1997.
I promise to pay the bearer is not to do with gold but silver, which is why the British currency is also known as sterling as in 'sterling silver'. Originally 0ne pound was more or less an IOU for one pound of sterling silver.
The predecimal pound was descended from the Librae. The pound symbol is still a scale (viewed side on) £ ⚖
Never knew that, great
Rubbish, the UK currency was backed by gold, you can google it and correct your understanding maybe!
Not rubbish , you should goggle it before advising others. Source wikipedia. " The origins of sterling lie in the reign of King Offa of Mercia (757-796) who introduced a sterling coin, made by physically dividing a tower pound of silver into 240 parts".
Further " The silver basis of the pound sterling remained essentially unchanged until the 1816 introduction of the gold standard"
So there we have it a link to the gold standard just over 1000 years after the currency based upon silver was conceived.
OK apology accepted
@@stevehaynes4327 .. that wasn’t U.K. currency!
Joseph Mallord William Turner - 1775-1851 - is one of my favourite artists and he was born in Covent Garden, London, the son of William Turner of Devon (1745-1829), a barber and wig-maker and his wife, Mary -nee Marshall, whose family had great success in the butcher's trade. His father encouraged his son's work by displaying it in his shop. There are books of his work, including fascimiles of his European tour sketchbooks, one particularly beautiful one of Venice. Amongst his more famous works is The Fighting Temeraire. the 98 gun HMS Temeraire, one of the last second-rate ships of the line that had a role in the Battle of Trafalgar, being towed to it's final berth at Rotherhith to be turned into scrap. The painting, an oil-on-canvas, was exhibited at The Royal Academy in 1839.
In all honesty, you almost never see a £50 note. Most cash machines (ATM's) don't even stock them.
Also, the reason it has "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ..." and the reason we call them notes not bills is because they evolved from a thing called a 'promissory note'.
I’m sure others have commented, mainly a point or two at a time, but to cover some of the points I noted when watching:
- the notes are indeed different sizes so as to help visually impaired people, aside from the Braille
- I don’t know the dates it happened but we have not had a £100 in my memory and I have never seen one (I am 60).
- however, to open up an entirely new can of worms, the Bank of Scotland DO have a £100 note, and issue all the other same denominations as the Bank of England notes you showed. These are technically legal currency but some shops may refuse to take them (though they are not allowed to refuse)
- there are no “chips” in any of the notes, just various sorts of security holograms and inclusions to make counterfeiting more difficult
- the coin you thought was a £2 (two pound) was in fact a 2p (two pence), just 2 pennies. There is a much, much bigger £2 coin and a £1 coin that is smaller than the £2 but still very thick
- the £50 note is widely used, but is not very common to see in daily use. Some smaller shops may refuse to take them, due to the monetary risk if it turns out to be a fake. Legally they are not allowed to refuse, but some do refuse to accept them.
- when taking cash out of an ATM a you will almost always only get £10 and £20 notes. I have never, ever received any other denomination, though I do believe that some ATMs on college campuses and nearby do give out £5 notes
- the 1p and 2p coins, and increasingly the 5p coin are becoming every less used, as prices negate their benefit. Though many shops do still stick to the £x.99 pricing point for goods, so you will end up with some, but then will find it difficult to find the right time and place to use them and will probably end up with a pocket full of them!
- the 50p coin is widely used, as are the 10p and 20p, and even more so the £1 and to a lesser degree the £2 coins
- J M W Turner is a very famous 18th/19th Century English painter, just as Jane Austen is a famous author.
- all the notes are plastic now, as you saw. This has only happened in the last few years. You can still come across older style £20 notes (which are even bigger than the current £20) but try to avoid them as some shops think they are no longer legal tender, though they are.
- the notes are made of a plastic polymer which many people think of as indestructible- but they are not. They have an expected life of 5 years as opposed to 2 years for the old paper/linen notes.
- final point - all this talk of notes and coins is fun and interesting, and of course these things are legal tender everywhere, but in practice we mainly use credit or debit cards, mostly in contactless format (up to £100 per transaction, you need to use the chip and PIN for higher amounts). I know people who literally now never use cash and it is somewhat unusual to pay larger amounts using cash anymore. Or our Apple or Samsung Pay features on our phones! One key example of this is the fact that you cannot pay for bus or subway (tube) tickets in London with cash - you have to buy a ticket from a machine ahead of time, buy a multi use “Oyster” card, or touch on and off a service using a credit, debit or phone transaction.
You are exactly right about the size thing, it's really helpful for the visually impaired. My dad is blind and can still use cash because he knows the sizes by touch.
Since Covid, contactless has become the way most of us pay for most things using debit cards (obviously chip and PIN is available). Avoid £50 notes - outside of London they're uncommon. £20 is the commonest high denomination note in general use.
Something else which I don't think anyone has commented on: the 1p coin weighs exactly half the weight of a 2p coin; and the the 5p coin is half the weight of a 10p coin. This means that you can just put all your copper coins together and weight them to see how much you have.
Fun fact: the difference in size between different UK notes is linear. So, for instance, the difference between the sizes of the £5 and the £10 is the same as the difference between the £10 and the £20.
Australian notes actually do the same, but, supposedly, they also get fractionally thicker by the same ratio.
The "chip" in our bank notes is a simple RF circuit like you see in key cards which allows machines to scan the note and the return signal tells the machine the value it makes counterfeiting very hard and makes designing ATM's vending machines and any other cash related technology much simpler and more reliable.
Every days a school 🏫 day 👍
Turner is one of Britain's most renowned painters and mostly known for his colourful and vivid depiction of British landscapes/ countryside.
Also, if you arrange the pence coins in a particular way, it forms the Royal coat of arms 😉
Having different sized notes makes it much easier to grab the note you're looking for if you have a mix in your wallet. I always have mine in order, 5,10,20, so, if I need a 20, I can thumb the top of it and pull it out without having to search through my notes :)
In the UK we don't generally carry larger cash denominations because we can use direct card payment in most shops or withdraw more cash without paying extra and with the larger values (such as the £50 one for example) there tend to be a lot of forgeries around. When you are familiar with how these look they are usually easy to spot but people handling cash in poor light can often be caught out (trust me, as a delivery driver I know this for a fact). This is made harder for the sales person that the Scottish version of our currency is still valid throughout the UK and is almost completely different in design meaning that forgeries of those notes in England and Wales are more likely to get past a casual inspection due to a lack of familiarity.
if i have a 'wad' (rare these days) you stack the notes from large to small. the size makes it super easy to find the right note without really looking at the stack.. also super useful for blind folk
As others have pointed out you want to go to a bank when you get here and change the £50 note, as it’s hard to get anywhere to accept it.
If you are going to Scotland bear in mind they issue their own notes, that look very different. While they are a valid currency in the rest of the U.K., and are effectively interchangeable with the Bank of England issued notes, you may find some shops outside of Scotland are wary of accepting them.
The 2p coin is the equivalent of 2cents, as there is a larger bi-metal £2 coin.
Some slang you may find useful:
Quid is the slang term for pound, and is quite common, so don’t be surprised if some tells you the value of something in ‘quid’.
I used to holiday in Northern Italy. Many shops there were happy to accept Scottish bank notes but refused English ones (nobody was forging Scottish notes) lol
In my nearly 55 years, I've never had a problem with spending Scottish notes in England. There is sometimes a hesitation, particularly with young staff who don't see Scottish notes very often.
@@Thurgosh_OG I suspect that’s the main reason people encounter the problem.
@@EvilSoupDragon Exactly, I've never seen a Scottish note, And would be very wary of excepting one because i would have not enough familiarity to spot a counterfeit one..Although like most people i probably wouldn't spot a fake UK one without a very close look lol..Good thing I've never worked behind a till. 🤣
Scottish notes are not legal tender, not even in Scotland.. They are commercially owned as opposed to government owned.
Turner (on the back of the 20) was an artist. The picture in the background is one his famous works, The Fighting Temeraire, showing an old wooden warship being towed away to be broken up. Coincidentally it also appears in the Bond film "Skyfall," when Bond meets Q in an art gallery to take delivery of his gun and radio, the two sit on a bench and briefly discuss the painting.
I'm British ( U.K.) and I've never seen, nor held in my hand..a £50 Note.No not Ever .so thanks for the experlation, on how it. looks!!
The plastic notes were invented in Australia, with watermarks and holograms, and they worked so well that the world has followed. They also go through the washing machine without damage . . .
dont look to good when they been in a dryer lol
There made in Wigton in the North of England along with the Australian notes.
@@edwardwise5100 Australian banknotes are made by the Reserve Bank of Australia at a site in Victoria, not in the UK.
@@Flatkatsi Maybe but we do / have made some of them here in the UK. I say we make the notes, it's the plastic then they get shipped off to the next place were they get printed. Innova Films factory Wigton.
@@edwardwise5100 The polymer substrate (the plastic) is made by Innova Films, but the banknotes themselves are made in Australia.
Haha I've actually never seen the new £50 note, businesses very very rarely accept them for some reason, and cash machines will -always- _almost always_ give you a maximum nomination of £20 for any amount of money.
Also I think one of the reasons why our notes are different sizes is so that is clearer when presenting money to someone what notes are being handed over. Typically you'd have the largest value notes at the bottom, so you're able to see all the different stacks without having to fan it out.
when i was in london i withdrew 200 pounds, and it gave me it in 50 pound notes
i then went to the pub bought half a beer, and gave him the 50 quid note lol
Most common denomination faked, dumb reason to not accept them though
@@cyberash3000 atm's dont tend to have £50's 0.o
@@KentRoads this one did it was opposite burrough market in london
Great video ! Our currency notes change every few years , and always vary the historical figures which appear on the back. Since they went plastic they all reduced in size a fair amount and although I'm 56 years old I've never ever had a £50 note.
I'm pretty sure the Bank of England dont issue high denomination notes to keep down counterfeiting 😘👍
The supply of £50 notes is limited because they get taken out of circulation very quickly by criminals. When the Euro was launched US and UK authorities begged the Europeans not to release a 500 Euro note because of how easy it would be for criminals to move large sums of money.
You’ve NEVER had a £50 note in 56 years !!! So you’ve never withdraw a large amount of cash from anywhere . I’m shocked , 50’s are so common here and I’m from the shithole called Slough.
@@klepto5596 honestly , I never have , maybe it's a northern thing ! 🤔
@@leedshunk Well you live and learn I guess.
A Brit here,you should look at our pre decimal coins,when there was 12 pennies to the shilling,(now 5p),20 shillings to the pound.I'm old enough to have given an entire set of pre decimal coins to my late American God Mother.There was the farthing,half penny,penny,three penny bit,sixpence,shilling,two shilling(aka florin) and half crown(2/6 which = 2 and half shillings).In those days we had our lowest note of value,the ten shilling note,affectionatly known as the ten bob note.Confused?there were 240 pennies to the £ before we went decimal on 15th Feb 1991.Hope you both find my input of interest.
Be aware that those are only Bank of England bank notes (bills). Scotland and Northern Ireland have multiple different decorations to their bills which look very different from the Bank of England version. Even through the Scottish and Northern Irish money doesn't look the same, they have the same value.
Here's a video showing the Scottish bank notes th-cam.com/video/iZDLhrwteKM/w-d-xo.html
Northern Irish bank notes video:
th-cam.com/video/sWDF4itt-n0/w-d-xo.html
Yeah, it's not just the Bank of England that prints money in the UK. There's different versions from the Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland, Clydesdale Bank, Northern Bank (Danske Bank), Ulster Bank and Bank of Ireland.
I love the Scottish notes - beautiful illustrations of otters, squirrels etc
Scottish and Irish notes are not legal tender and shops (etc) in England and Wales can (and frequently do) refuse to accept them. Banks will exchange them though.
Bank of England notes are accepted in Scotland, however.
@@fog8251 you say that yet in England, Scotland and Wales I struggle to find shops that will accept my Northern Irish notes and in England especially they seem to only accept BOE notes. Northern Ireland however we will accept anything as long as it is from the UK, although some areas also accept Euros
No it can’t and Scottish notes are not legal tender in England (or strangely in Scotland where only minted coins are acceptable). Scottish notes are actually mere ‘promissory notes’ issued by 3 Scottish banks and backed by English notes or gold of equivalent value.
Shopkeepers in the UK may however accept what they like in exchange for goods.
Travelling to the states (pre plague) I found myself getting very annoyed with the currency all being the same size & colour. Especially in low light areas or at night it really slowed me down when paying. The texture reminds me of playing monopoly 😂
… you never know what (note) you’re pulling out in a titty bar … 😂😂😂
Just to let you know for when you're here in the UK, some shops/restaurants stopped taking cash since the pandemic and only accept card. Also £50s are actaully very uncommon, I don't think you can even get them at ATMs (I've never used one before), and some small shops won't accept them, mostly just supermarkets will. Also, we call it change too, our 50p is pretty common, and the 2 pence is not the same and 2 pound -pence is like cents and pounds are like dollars, so that 2 pence piece you have is more similar to 2 cent. We do have 1 and 2 pound coins and they're both pretty cool. And for if you go to Scotland, they have different cash there but you can use English money in Scotland and Scottish money in England:) Hope you love the UK! :)
Someone may have already commented, but lots of places, especially independent places, don’t like to take £50s. There used to be a lot of fraud and most people handle them so rarely it’s harder to spot them. If you want to be kind to cashiers, swap them out for smaller denominations at bigger places.
Also, I’m old enough to remember £1 notes and I loved them because I got 50p a week pocket money so if I saved up for 2 weeks I could swap my coins for a note and feel rich.
When it comes to cash familiarity is really important I think, when I visited the states I hated how all the notes looked the same to me. It's probably instinctive to Americans when trying to tell the difference but I spent the entire holiday paranoid I was somehow going to waste a $100 bill thinking it was a $1 bill. With our notes all looking so different I don't have that problem lol.
I've almost forgotten what its like to use cash, just about everywhere here in the UK is contactless now, either with a phone app or bank card. I've even seen places that no longer accept cash.
Sad really as I don't like the idea of a cashless society but with cash machines getting ever rarer trying to get cash can be a pain.
About a year back there was a news item that said around midday possibly about Million people in supermarkets across the country & elsewhere could not pay for there food at the checkout because the main data bank processor had broken down & lasted for several hours.They had to leave there trolley's & go home.Only people with cash could buy food.If we head for a cashless society & there's a big malfunction or cyber attack, what then.Nobody can guarantee this won't happen. All the best.
Similarly in Denmark the last time people bought anything with bills or coins back in like 2015. Many businesses are even pushing to be able to decline cash.
Even at various Festivals or Faires you are unable to pay in cash and need to make a debit or credit transfer.
The push towards controlling our money digitally and by definition "people"
@@davidbell8320 Absolutely!!!
I hardly handle cash anymore. The thing that surprises me is that in the USA (I believe) you can't go into a banking app on your phone/computer and pay a bill directly to the account of the person you owe the money to (BACS system). This is why I no longer use much in the way of coins or notes. If I am going to a country that uses Euros (or a number of other currencies such as US dollars) I have a multicurrency cash passport card that I preload with Euros. When I am there I can reload more money as required using the online app. I get a far better exchange rate doing this than you can get at airports or tourist areas. Using a phone that is unlocked biometrically makes contactless payments safer than using a card. I would prefer a biometrically locked card as well but they are not generally available yet.
We have a 2p coin, which is massive. The reason is because we used to have a ½p coin, & they made the 2p really big so it would be four times the weight of the ½p coin, so banks could use the same counting machine for both denominations.
When there were 240 pence to the pound, we had coins at 1/20 (shilling), ⅒ (florin) & ¼ (crown). In 1970, when the penny was revalued from 1/12 of a shilling to ⅕ of a shilling, the £¼ coin was changed to £⅕ so that all coins would be divisible by each other.
As you are going to Scotland be aware that Scotland produces their own banknotes - Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland and Clydesdale Bank. They all have the Sterling (£) value on them, but look different to the notes you have. So does Northern Ireland, but not Wales.
We tend to call change 'copper' and 'silver' or 'loose change'. Calling small coins change is fine, but don't include the £1 and above coins in that description.
Yes, the 50p coin is in common circulation. The uncommon currency tends to be the £2 coin and £50 notes.
Some coins have different designs on the back for special occasions. The £1 coins (for example) are themed by country so there is a generic £1, one with a Welsh, Scottish, English and Irish design. It can be confusing for foreigners.
And, as it's the Platinum Jubilee there is a special £5 coin that has been minted for the occasion.
When you get to the UK go into a bank and swap your £50 notes. Not many places like to take them. The notes were designed the way they are to help against counterfeits. And the 2pence is Like 2cents not 2 pounds. We do have a £2 coin that is gold and silver.
Yes I agree, a lot of shops will act strange if you produce a £50. £20 is normally the highest note you will see
I was thinking the same. The £50 is rarely used because a lot of shops don’t accept them.
The new £50 is good tho because they except that.
Absolute nonsesnse, I often get paid in £50 notes and never have a problem spending them.
Shops seem check them more than any other note despite the fact you really don't get counterfeit 50's.
I work in a shop and we accept £50 all the time we just have to check them more carefully, and we get paid in them alot as workmen and builders tend to get paid in them.
Definitely stay away from the £50 note guys, They are very hard to spend in the UK as a lot of businesses will refuse to take them as they are scared of being left with forgeries.
Though, they were the easiest to tell if they were forgeries as they were normally more pristine and the ink that should rub off does rub off (I used to joke with customers that "this one's still wet!").
Of course that's the old style. New style needs a laser pointer to check I guess.
That is no longer true as the new £50 is virtually impossible to forge. I have seen a forged version of the new £20 note and it looked as if it had been done by a child.
@@helenwood8482 I still will NOT accept one.
@@TheStv89 why?
I believe that in part it has to do with the differences in values, ie buying something that costs £10 with a £50 would be next to impossible. But i am not sure if they would be as reluctant to accept a £50 if you were buying something priced at £60 or £70 for example.. 🤔
Dont use a £50 note unless you are buying something around the £40 plus value as these notes are not common and many smaller places will struggle to give change. Contactless payment eg applepay is accepted in most places now and is the preferred payment since covid.
More than that, shops lose out more if the note is fake. So many won't accept anything over £20
I have really enjoyed your vlogs. You are probably the most knowledgeable about the UK and seem very curious to know more:-)
We got rid of the £1 note in 80s due it it being easy to counterfeit. I wish we could bring it back now it is extremely hard to counterfeit the new notes. I hate having so many coins in my pocket.
Turner is a famous painter from the 18th century known for many of his works of romantic paintings.
Alan Turing has only recently been put onto the back of the £50note as the old ones have only just been phased out, although some shops don’t except £50 due to again how easy it was to counterfeit the old notes which remained in circulation until recently.
It wasn't due to counterfeiting it was because notes wear out so quickly and it was easier for vending machines to take a £1 coin than a £1 note. The coins cost more to make but last 50 times as long so overall they're more cost effective to produce.
19th century for the most part.
@@billythedog-309 true.
Thank the Australians for plastic currency, they pioneered it and we followed them as it proved more robust and harder to forge... Although forgery isn't as easy as you make out, the paper alone was almost impossible to duplicate never mind the water mark and ribbon..
@@daveofyorkshire301 I don't mind how the new notes look and feel. If it leads to more notes and less coins.
£50 notes are pretty rare, I can't remember the last time I saw one. A lot of shops don't like to accept them as they're the most commonly forged note. The 2p coin is worth 2 pennies, not two pounds. we do have £1 and £2 coins but you don't seem to have any. The shape of the 20p and 50p coins is to help the visually impaired as is the size and colour of the notes. You'll notice that the 5p and 10p coins have milled edges unlike the 1p and 2p coins, again this helps the visually impaired although originally silver coins had milled edges to deter people shaving the edges off pure silver coins. You won't need much actual cash in the UK as virtually everywhere accepts contactless payments now, there are even some small businesses that don't accept cash.
Also, the bit that says "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of twenty pounds" refers to the Bank of England not the Queen. You can see the Governor of the Bank of England's name and signature in the top left corner. It used to mean you could exchange the note for £20 of gold, now it means you can exchange an old, out of circulation note for a current note.
J.M.W. Turner is one of Britain's most famous artists. They started putting famous people on the notes in 1990 and they change them every few years.
They were commonly forged in paper form. I've had plenty of the plastic £50 notes and have had no trouble spending them.
Agree with Jase. The old paper £50 note had a bad reputation, but the new one looks fabulous, and is so new that there won't be many forgeries yet.
Almost everyone accepts them and it’s not the most copied, it’s the risk to a business is far higher of getting it wrong.bad inflation increases £50 become more common
The first famous person used on a Bank of England note was William Shakespeare on the back of the B318 £20 note from 1970. The second was Florence Nightingale on the back of the B330 £10 note in 1975. There was a few more before 1990.
@@jase6709 Yeah a lot of fish and chip shops refused to take the £50.🤣
Full disclosure, £50 note is legal tender but you'll be hard-pressed to get some shops to accept it.
The highest we usually see is £20.
Additionally, we have a £1 coin and £2 coin, the £1 coin was recently redesigned from a previously round coin to a multi edged coin and it also contains a holographic little patch that changes between £ and 1 depending on where you look at it.
Some facts:
- The Pound Sterling is the oldest ongoing currency in the world (Anglo Saxon)
- It only became decimalised in the 70s and we hated it (we thought decimal was confusing)
- Turn new coins around and it forms the Royal Shield
- On the new £1 coin is a rose, leek, shamrock and thistle inside a crown. These represent: Rose = England, Leek = Wales, Shamrock = Northern Ireland, Thistle = Scotland which form the United Kingdom
- Our paper money is no longer in circulation. The ones you have are made from polymer
- Only dead famous people (UK-only) can be on the back of pound notes. They can only be non-royals as well, so Princess Diana is a no-go etc
- A £1 note used to exist but no longer does
- About 60% of the Commonwealth is under 29. This means about 1.5 million people have only ever known the Queen to be on their money at some point in history
- Decimal money (coins): 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20, 50p, £1, £2. Made mostly from copper and nickel
- Decimal money (notes): £5, £10, £20, £50
- Non-decimal (£sd): £1 = 20 shillings (s), 1 shilling = 12 pence (d). So say you buy x for 3 shilling and 4 pence, that would be written as 3s/4d or 3/4.
- Non-decimal coins: Florin (2s), Crown (5s), Half-Crown (2s/6d), Farthing (1/4d), Sovereign (£1), Guinea (21s)
Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own notes. They are worth exactly the same as the English notes, and the Scottish ones in particular look cooler than the English ones.
They are also technically illegal tender as legally on Bank of England notes are legal. However, then again legal tender is just what a shop keeper accepts as payment.
Yeah good luck trying to spend a Scottish note in an English shop lol
@@ukguy I used to work at a chip shop and during rush hour at the shop a women came in and was all Karen like demanding her Scottish tender was legal I our shop 9n the South Coast of England. As it was extremely busy I said it wasn't and she could either pay with a valid note, she didn't have any and her food was ready so I just took the note, pocketed it and paid myself for the food to keep the line of customers moving. Luckily, I collect banknotes and coins and didn't have that note yet.
@@ukguy it happens i never change my notes. I stand my ground
@@AnderEvermore Debit cards, credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and cheques aren't legal tender either. Scottish and Northern Irish bank notes are perfectly valid for payment in England, and I say that as someone that worked at Sainsbury's and HSBC. All such notes are backed by deposits at the Bank of England - it's why the £1 million note and the £100 million note exist.
You wouldn't believe the security features UK money has, holograms, raised lettering, a unique font just to name a few of them. They have raised lettering and are different sizes to help the blind community determine what they have in their pockets. Incidentally, keep notes in a wallet, purse or money clip, do not put them straight into your pocket, being polymer they slide out of your pocket way too easily.
In England and Wales all notes are the same designs, the design is changed periodically, While banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland (Ulster) have different designs, though the same sizes.
Some shops in England do not like accepting Scottish or Ulster notes.
Other countries like Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man also issue notes, which if accepted have to be paid into a bank.
Coins 1p and 2p are the same weight for equal value, likewise 5p and 10p.
The 20p and 50p coin design is clever, equal dimension across diameter, so they roll in machines.
The recent polymer notes include quite a few features against forgery. Silver logo has holographic image to name one.
Quite a few countries now use polymer notes.
A lot of things you think are "weird" about coin sizes have to do with the old days when real gold and silver coins were in use, and the metal value was supposed to be equal to the face value. The US nickel (5 cents) is larger than the dime (10 cents) because it is made of nickel when the dime used to be silver, and nickel is cheaper than silver. The nickel actually replaced the silver half dime in 1865, which was actually half the size of a dime. If you weigh five dimes and two quarters (both 50 cents), you will see they are equal in weight, because at one time they contained there face value in silver. The UK coins are no longer aligned with their original sizes under the gold and silver standard, but the 1 penny and 2 pence (pence is the plural of penny in UK English) are proportional to each other, as are the 5 and 10 pence.
I live in the UK and I rarely use physical currency these days. My exceptions are for some tipping and paying my window cleaner. Otherwise, I use my Apple watch contactlessly for most everything on a daily basis, including collecting Costa Coffee points. I will use my debit/credit cards (chip and pin) for large purchases. Like previous comments, I cannot remember the last time I saw a £50 note. I suggest you walk into any high street bank once you are here and ask then to break it down to lower denominations, which they will do for free. Finally, if you ever need to visit a Dr, come to Scotland as there are no prescription charges.
Prescriptions are free to those who live in Scotland.
It's not as simple as go to Scotland and everything is free, different rules for non citizens etc
One thing that you might like to be aware of is that the price labelled on goods (barring errors) is the price that you pay. There is no additional cost at the checkout.
IOW, the tax is pre-paid!
@@dinerouk I think pre-calculated would be a better way to describe it as the customer still pays it.
@@0Zed0
Tax is included in the price tag on the item, might be best.
2:15 The one pound coin is equivalent to your one dollar bill NOT one pence 😭😭😂😂
Not sure if anyone said this, or if you'll even see it... The strips in the 100 are what UK money used to have. The strip is woven through the material and you can't rip through the strip. Fake notes have foil strips printed on and you can tear through them.
The 100's probably all have a tear in them from people testing the notes. They tear up a bit of the note to see if they can tear across the strip.
Interesting fact. Because the Queen has been on the throne for so long, all our current notes and coins bear an image of her head on one side. Before decimalisation (1971) it was commonplace to see coins bearing the heads of previous monarchs, and dated accordingly. When Charles becomes King his head will, of course, start to appear, but old coins with the Queen on them won't routinely be taken out of circulation. Notes tend not to last too long anyway, so those with the Queen on them might disappear fairly quickly. I wonder if the Bank of England/Royal Mint have already prepared new designs against the day. Probably.
I do believe Charles has posed for his portrait several times at this point.
He will also be facing the other direction (on the coins at least) as they always alternate direction with each monarch so Charles will be facing left...
When you look at old pre decimal coins most will have left facing heads as George V and George VI are by far the most common ones around. Edward VII wasn't on the throne long enough to actually have coins enter circulation properly but as they had produced some (facing right) it swapped back for George VI
I was given a £50 note yesterday, only the second time in my life I've had one 😆. Yet when I've been to Europe and used euros, 50 notes are a lot more common.
In Europe, we also have 100, 200 and 500 euro notes - the latter is often referred to as a Bin Laden because you don't often see them! Although the 500 is still legal tender and in circulation, I believe they have stopped producing them. I've noticed that whilst 50 pound notes are fairly uncommon in the UK, when it comes to buying UK notes in Europe, we're often given 50's - never had a problem spending them though.
@@frank9446 It's odd. They aren't in general circulation, so if we see one it is a very rare thing. If you go to a cash machine in the UK to withdraw like 250 quid, you will probably get 10 twenties and 5 tens or something like that. Not sure why the 50 is not used much.
€50 is supper common unlike £50
But the €100, €200 and €500 notes are less so... I have only seen a €500 once and the store somone was spending it in had to call the manager to get it approved...
The biggest I have used was a €200 but even that was ridiculously large
It's mainly because most (paper/polymer) currency in the UK enters circulation through ATMs (which tend to only hold £10 and £20 notes), the £50 is the largest denomination (in England at least), and most people buy rather than sell things (you aren't getting a £50 note in your change).
The ATM issue is also why there is probably a 50% chance you're getting your change in coins instead of a fiver.
I have some paper fifties my landlord gave me for something a while back that I need to get around to exchanging for polymer.
Advantages of the different sizes of pound notes is that you can tell the different denominations apart just by feel, and it makes it easier to sort and arrange them since the larger denominations will stick out further.
JMW Turner was a famous painter (a precurser of the Impressionists). You can see a lot of his best paintings at the Tate Gallery in London.
Remember Scotland has it's own notes, including a £100 note.
Yes but not legal tender, anywhere.
@@donvanvliet9477 Legal tender is a very specific term for a legal setting, in certain circumstances certain English currency also wouldn't be 'legal tender' as its to do with which denominations of currency are acceptable for paying a debt.
However, even if it did mean what you think it means, you're wrong. While many shops won't accept them due to the inconvenience and having a right to refuse payment, they are in fact perfectly legal to use in the rest of the UK
@@bradforever10 Im fully aware of the definition of legal tender, which is not relevant for day to day use and also the limits but those limits only apply to coins and that is irrelevant here. In particular, you seem to think that I am saying that because something isnt 'legal tender' then it is not legal to use it. I am not saying that, a shop can accept or reject any bits of paper or tokens it wants in payment, so long the shop keeper has confidence in whoever issued the paper or the token. Legal tender only comes into play when offering to settle a debt in full and the creditor cant then sue for payment. But the concept is important because it gives holders of legal tender confidence as to the value and safety of the notes. Also, it is important for our US friends to understand the difference because all US bank notes are Legal Tender and they may not be aware of the concept of a bank note not having that status.
Various legislation over time, the first in 1833, gave the BoE the sole right to issue notes that were Legal Tender but this only covered England & Wales (for notes). All other banks' notes are negotiable instruments and have the legal status of promissory notes, no more. This has the surprising outcome that in NI and Scotland no notes at all have the status of 'Legal Tender' (not even BoE) but the notes in issue have the confidence of the holders. So, with respect, I am right.
No-one ever uses the £50 note, this is the first time I’ve seen one of the new ones before so we don’t see ANY need for having a £100 note, it’s just excessive
I remember about 15 years ago when we went to the US when a pound was worth about 2 USD. So back then a £50 was worth a 100 dollar bill, and we didn't seem to need a note of higher value since then... unless you're in Scotland of course!
Well as someone who works in retail, I can tell you £50 notes are pretty common.
The building on the transparent window on the £10 polymer banknote is Winchester Cathedral where the English novelist Jane Austen is buried her portrait is on the reverse of the banknote.
Our new plastic notes have brail on them for blind people, but blind people could be trained to tell the value of the old paper notes by placing them between their fingers. As they are different widths depending on how long the gap was from finger tip to edge of note gave it's value.