My teen daughter was working at a convenience store here in the US, when some kids came in on bikes and purchased candy and soda with Morgan silver dollars. Yeah, I suspect they raided mom and dad's coin collection..... she did, of course, put here own dollars in the till and kept the coins. She would have gladly given them back had the parents come in with the guilty parties to confess the crime. They never did.
When I worked in a bookstore, I opened a roll of dimes to find a number of Mercury dimes. Another clerk and I replaced those dimes with cash from our pockets.
I'll never forget the time I put a dime into a vending machine and the machine keep spitting it out. I looked at it after 3 tries and found out it was a silver dime. The machine thought it was a slug because silver weighs more than the alloys used in modern coins.
What's interesting about the dime is that it really doesn't say on it how much it's worth. It says one dime. It really should say ten cents. All other coins show their value in cents or in the case of the quarter it says one quarter dollar. But one dime, what's that?
@@mattcolver1 What's a cent, really? Shouldn't all the coins give their values directly in dollars like the quarter? Or maybe the quarter and all the bills should have their values in cents. Just because dime is less commonly used doesn't make it any less valid of a unit.
Fun fact: the Dutch guilder, used in The Netherlands until the Euro came in our lives, was also known as Florijn, or Florin. Hence the abbreviation FL for the Dutch guilder in the old days….
Old Gold Sovereigns are also legal tender in the UK due to their £1 face value. In theory, you can use the Sovereign to purchase goods up to £1 in value, but the gold content of the coin is worth far more. Its legal tender status is important for gold investors as it deems any profits made from Sovereigns as tax-free.
The older coins were made of silver, though much less in post WW1 ones and none after 1947. My great uncle was a meter reader in the 40s, and paid for his house swapping the silver coins he took out with base metal ones. A 1920-1947 shilling is worth about £1.25 in silver.
When I was a kid, coins and charms were put in the Christmas puddings, if you found one, it meant good luck though they had to be kept for the next year,. They would have to be the early silver ones.
@@grahvis , Yes, and our Mother did the same here in South Africa. However, She used the old Three Penny Coin, commonly known as a Tiekie, and so our Christmas Pud was called the Tickey Pudding!
In Australia we had 92.5% silver in our coins until 1946 then they devalued our currency to 50% until 1965. In 1966 50c coins had 80% silver but after that nothing. Inflation is great.😂😂😂😂😂😂
It sounds like Brittain did the same thing America did, but we were always Decimal. We went from solid 90% silver for dimes through dollars in 1964 and no silver sometime in the 1970s. Pennies here are almost brass pieces with far more zinc than copper and don't even go on about the base metals in the former silver coins. If I get anymore pre-1964 coins in my change I am saving it for the bullion value and keeping it for after the collapse of the Dollar.
In the UK, "Legal Tender" doesn't merely mean the ability to spend it as currency over the counter. It means it has value towards a debt and the creditor cannot refuse it as payment for court judgements in their favour.
Exactly this. Way to keep pedaling the 'legal tender you have to take it' in shops myth. But what do we expect from this guy's poorly researched 'history' videos.
@@unscentednapalm8547 Didn't you just agree with someone who was agreeing with Mark that it is "Legal Tender", then proceed to say that "Legal Tender" is a myth?
@@unscentednapalm8547 This guy makes some of the most highly curated and expertly analyzed history content on youtube and here you are too dumb to even comprehend what you heard from a video you just watched.
US Coin sizes have been unchanged for decades. However, you don't see quarter and half dollar coins from 1964 or before very often. AFAIK, they are still legal tender but they are nearly pure silver and, hence, for the last 50 plus years they are worth more than their face value on silver content alone.
Yes very true and still legal tender. Afterwards some enterprising Americans visit Canada to buy those silver coins and return to sell at the higher silver value. Canadian coins are same size & face value but Canada stopped making any circulation coins out of nearly pure silver around 1967-69.
Canadian coins have the same denominations as their American counterparts, namely 5 cents, 10 cents, and 25 cents but have different values given the ever-changing exchange rates between the Canadian and American dollars. Canadian coins are also made of different metals than their American counterparts. For example, I tried to use a Canadian quarter in an American phone booth 30-odd years ago and my coin just fell straight into the "rejected" slot; apparently the American coin slot mechanism detects the difference in metals. Canada got rid of its penny a few years back and I haven't seen a 50 cent piece in many decades although I expect they're still legal tender. Our $1 and $2 bank notes were replaced by coins some years back.
Coin collectors on UA-cam get rolls of coins from banks all the time and go through them on camera. They find silver coinage, tons of wheat pennies, the even older Indian head pennies, and all kinds of foreign coins. All still in circulation, fresh from the bank.
Many years ago I was behind a kid in a comic book store who was trying to buy things with Morgan dollars amongst other silver coins at face value. The kid at the register wouldn't accept them. I immediately bought all of his coins at twice the face value. He was very happy. I was even happier!
As an American (who's been to the UK quite a few times), most of this is unfamiliar to me, but this is a fascinating segment about such an obscure topic. Well done sir!
ask Mark nicely, he might explain to us nickels/dimes and so on. For the UK there is a lot of slang for both mulitiples of a pound(Quid) including old counting (Score for 20 and so) and lower coinage, (Tanner/Joey come to mind)
@@highpath4776 I was in New Zealand in 1984, and mistakenly referred to their 10 cent piece as a dime. The shopkeeper kindly corrected me, but that was probably a dead giveaway as to who's a tourist...
My mum was a clippie on the 19 bus and used to tell me that American tourists were totally bewildered when paying their fare, holding out a handful of pennies, ha’pennies, tanners, bobs, thruppenny bits, half-crowns and florins, telling her to take what she wanted.
@@barrygower6733 My first trip to the UK as a 16 year old in 1980, that was totally me: grab a pocket full of these weird and wonderful coins and let the person take what they needed.
@@barrygower6733 1960s school exercise books had imperial measures on the back cover. Avoirdupois weights, Troy weights for gold, silver and jewels, long measures (fathoms, poles, furlongs), cloth (nails and quarters), heaped measures (bushels, sacks, chaldrons), dry measures (noggins, pecks), and so on. Our dog-eared text books had tests based on some of these, and every conversion had a different multiple and none of them were 10!
I heartily agree, Dr. Felton...the headlong rush to eliminate the use of physical money is unsettling. Just this week here in America talk has begun about a "digital dollar" replacing our currency, which could literally be "turned off" by banks or the government for any number of reasons. Thank you for yet another engaging post and for your usual excellence.
Well spotted - for why else would this channel War Stories be producing a video about coins. Social credit is already being applied to You Tube channels by demonetisation and shadow banning. YT channel Triggernometry has had its bank account closed by Tide bank for undisclosed reasons.
The rush to get rid of cash is often dismissed as a 'conspiracy theory'. However, it's hardly a conspiracy when it's happening quite openly. I had predicted the Queen's death might be used as an opportunity to get rid of cash. It hasn't happened, but we are still heading that way.
The bank or govt. can 'turn off' your money whenever they like anyway, though no point making it easier for them by agreeing to anything they want to do.
the main reason for getting rid of cash is to retain the value. Every time you print money (or technically, put it into circulation) you reduce the value of each coin/note. If you put more cash into circulation than it is taken out, the money becomes devaluated, and reversely, if more is taken out of circulation than is put back in, the value increases. By removing cash the value becomes effectively fixed - more or less, as the value depends somewhat on what it's based on in the first place. You also remove the ability to speculate in cash trade, forging money becomes almost impossible, and you incidentially also save money by not having all the extra processes to deal with cash. Only you then create a bunch of other problems that come along with doing everything digitally, like how do you prevent the government from magically create more money to pay for stuff?
It’s getting beyond a joke how many places here in the UK don’t want cash now, and I don’t think covid has helped. I was at my university the other week and left my wallet at home but I always have some change in my bag, I just wanted to buy a drink for £1, they refused to take it and said just have the drink! Generous but what a fuss about accepting a piece of legal tender for payment!
Fun fact, any US Dollar coin or bill ever made and not in too bad of shape is also still totally legal tender as the Dollar was never revalued or taken out of circulation. One of the few currencies in existence with this quirk.
@@OPIXdotWORLD Some freedoms are worthless. Others you lost long ago and they have made no difference to your life and never could in most cases. Example, you can not leave the USA without a Passport. If you can't get issued one, a boarder guard will say "Halt" and ( in the USA. The rest of us are not pathologically fond of guns so it PROBABLY wouldn't happen here, they would just taze me if I tried it ) then shoot to kill if you keep walking. Or swimming. Or sailing. Or flying. :\
Not sure about gold coins, as private ownership of gold was banned from 1933 until Nixon took us off the gold standard. Not that anyone's about to turn down a double eagle on a $20 purchase!
Even size change of our change didn't matter. The huge Ike dollar, barely larger than a quarter Susan B. Anthony and the brass Sacagawea and presidential series dollars are all worth the same. And in the 1850's you had large cents and standard size pennies circulating at the same time. It became quite confusing when they tried to introduce a .02 coin the same size as the old large cents that had just been discontinued a few years prior.
Imagine living in the Dominion of Newfoundland with 3 recognized types of Currency ; British , Canadian ,and Newfoundland. Many Canadian Provinces still accepted British currency well into the 1890's, with some Provinces holding out until the early 1900's.
I have pre-decimal one penny coins minted in the reigns of Victoria, Edward VII, George V, George VI, and Elizabeth II - a fascinating march through history.
You can even do that with decimal coins. They are marked with the year. Take a look at remember the history the older ones have been through. Every year has a story and the coins have been there to see them. 1982 Falklands War, 1977 Queen's Silver Jubilee, 1990 and 1991 First Gulf war and so on. Although new coins do tend to arrive in circulation later in the year. Take some change out, look at the dates and think of the history they have seen.
Being born in Australia in '64 two years before the decimal system came in and as a kid I used to always get sixpences, shillings and florins in my lunch money/change etc. I still remember in the mid-seventies using the old pennies to buy sweets. By the late seventies I got into coin collecting so any I came across went straight to my collection and not the local shop.
I still remember when a coworker thought a customer was trying to pass a counterfeit $5 bill when it was just an old silver certificate. They’re still legal tender but you just can’t get silver for them anymore.
I remember that when I was working at McDonald's in 2003 and I was the only one there who knew what a silver cert was. Fortunately I told the kid that he should keep that cert because it was worth quite a bit being from the depression era one from the San Francisco mint
Canadian coins were made of silver until 1968, when they were replaced by nickel alloys. As the change happened, my Dad let me siphon the silver coins from his pockets. I managed to find a few Edward VII coins still in circulation, though so worn as not to be of much value collection wise. My first visit to England was just after the change to the decimal system. A great relief since my Mother had tried to explain to me the old system and I wanted no part of that. My cousin worked for the post office, and one of the things he did was service pay phones. Frequently, people tried to file down big old pennies (again, one was Edward VII) to 10p size so they could be used in the pay phones-- and of course they'd more often than not get stuck.
Canada didn't really change there coins except the penny ( circa 2013)1 dollar bill (1986) and 2 dollar bill (1996). We Americans get pennies dimes nickels quarters 1 dollars and very very rarely half dollars and 2 dollars.
@@alexcholagh8330 And more so in places near the border (ie Detroit). Growing up, i would often get pennies with QE2 alongside the wheat and Memorial pennies.
@@cwf1701 I used to get alot of Canadians in port Huron/fort Gratiot I was 10 minutes away from the sarnia border and many of customers are Canadians and they tip well
Being in the USA, all coins and bills issued by the Federal Government are still legal tender. Although like the Double Florin you mention, the value in both materials and collector value far exceed the face value. (I used to work as both a bank teller and a cashier at a store, and would happily buy any pre 1965 silver coins that came my way.) As for the coin not having a denomination, in the US we had a similar problem. The 1883 Liberty Head nickel (5 cent coin) was not marked with the word "Cents", it just had a Roman Numeral V on the back. The problem was the coin was similar in size to the 5 Dollar gold coin circulating at the same time. So it didn't take long for some "enterprising" individuals to gold plate their nickels and pass them off as $5.00 coins. Needless to say the 1884 and beyond versions of the coins had the word "Cents" added.
I've always been confused about an American expression: "Don't take any wooden nickels". Does this indicate that America actually made coins out of wood at some point or, more likely, that scheming individuals once counterfeited legal nickels with wooden ones?
@Hugh Mungus In the early 20th century it was custom for stores and businesses to make "wooden nickels", which were large size tokens essentially doubling as business cards. Sometimes they would include a cash value (usually 5c) redeemable in the store/merchant being advertised.
@@Heike-- there is a whole load of interesting things about trade tokens (often given as change as no legal requirement to give change for overtendering) or employer payment tokens (Illegal since I am not sure when - used to be common in the mining and railroad construction industries, and such tokens could only be spent in employer owned shops and pubs)
I remember D day for decimal currency very well. I was aged eight at the time. At school we were given plastic decimal coins to familiarize ourselves with the new denominations etc. My mother never got used to decimal and would always need me to convert prices to what she described as, " real money."
mum and dad were littlewoods pools collectors so had to learn. Being a change (sic) to decimal the new currency maths was a doddle to learn )(appart from we still had Oz to Lb to Cwt multiples to learn for doing adding up of some prices)
Here in the US I keep using coins and paper bank notes too -- I want as little to do with digital currency as possible! Thanks for another interesting post Dr. Felton!
I think you have twigged what the real reason for this video is. Triggernometry's bank account has been closed for 'undisclosed' reasons by their bank, and at least half the channels I watch have recently been censored, demonetised or shadow banned for wrong think. This video is a close as Mark dare get to protesting this insidious creep towards central digital currency and the Social Credit System used to control the behaviour and beliefs of a people by its government.
Maybe somewhat related... In the early 1980's I was a Naval Aviator in the US Navy. While deployed to the Mediterranean, using some leave, I met my wife in London for a few days. After this visit I had some leftover British money which included a 1 pound note in excellent condition, I squrreled this bit of currency away in a drawer with all my other money from around the world. In the middle 90's I was now a Delta Airlines L-1011 co-pilot and had a layover in Brighton. I went to a pub with some crewmembers for a pint. I had brought along the 1-pound note and I handed it to the man behind the bar to help pay for my adult beverage. He looked at it and said that he couldn't take it as payment as it had been replaced by a coin but I could exchange it at a bank. He then looked at the note again and verbally expressed some minor admiration at the fine condition it was in. HA!
I smell a great UA-cam video upcoming 'living in London by spending only Victorian currency'. You could do the same here in the states , almost no us legal tender has been ended, only $5000 and higher bills have been de monetized. Our $1,000 bills are still very much legal. Along with half pennies and 20c pieces.
Welcome to the world of numismatics, Mark! I collected British pre-decimals since my early childhood, although in my teens I specialised in ancient coins... but I still keep my entire pre-decimal collection! The double florin is still one of my favorite pre-decimals I have a nice 1887 example, quite a unique coin since it was a short lived denomination or, as we numismatist call them - 'a miscellaneous' denomination.
I was 16 and my family was living in England in 1971, the year of conversion. I loved those coins. The pennies were huge and my neighborhood mates smashed them on the railway tracks. I had saved up an entire cigar box of thrup ‘n bits but ny mother wouldn’t let me bring them home.
@@martinphilip8998 And the ha'penny was good to play on the shovel board, a game that was called 'shove ha'penny'... I made myself a wooden board to play with my friends when I was a kid back in the '80s 😄
@@Numischannel I bought a pair of Churchill crowns from my neighbor girlfriend.-. One late night I went to a Pakistani restaurant. I ordered medium spicy and got a big blister on my palette. The blister is gone but I still have the silver 1945 shilling they gave me in my change. British coins and stamps will always hold my interest. If I was rich, I’d love to own coins from the Tudor period.
As interest would have it, up here in the States we had a very similar piece - like the Double Florin it was one-fifth of the full currency unit (in our case, twenty cents), and again like the Double Florin it only stuck around for a few years (was only minted for circulation in 1875 and 1876). Miscellaneous indeed.
In Atlanta Georgia if you use the city bus and rail system and buy your pass from a vending machine you will receive Sacagawea dollar coins as change if you use a larger bill to buy your pass. The Sacagawea is legal tender in the US but because it's rare some establishments refuse to take them and many places have young people working there that have no idea what it is. A similar problem is experienced when using a two dollar bill. It's been in circulation for ages but most people have no idea what it is or if it's legal. But it's worth two dollars. Of course you can't buy hardly anything for two dollars anymore.
Someone left a bag of British coins in a cart at the grocery store I was working at as a teenager. Most were dated 1892-1928. I had them valued once, $4000-5000 for all 52 coins. This was 20 years ago. Need to get them looked at again
Worth noting that ‘legal tender’ doesn’t mean you can demand to use it to pay for goods in the UK. Shops are free to chose what payment types they accept, including coinage. Its meaning is limited to having the right to use it to satisfy an existing debt.
Sixpences were kept because London Transport had so many fares with sixpence and so many automatic machines taking them it would be impossible for LT to function without them.
Another pre-decimal coin that predates the double florin that remains legal tender as of 2023 is the five shilling crown. It survived decimal day being worth 25 new pence. In fact, it was succeeded by new decimal crowns which were minted for commemorative purposes until 1981. The original crowns were struck till 1965, millions in base metal so they are more practical to spend. You could wind up with a crown in your change from 1818 with George III.
of course they would have done because we were still using them till 1972 , we could use them for a few months after decimalisation in 1971 as the banks carried on accepting them and melting them down
That makes sense as the size, composition and weight of them never changed right up until they were abolished in 1971. You'd have to go way back to the time of George IV to find coins of a different size and weight (even though the basic design on both sides was the same, i.e. Britannia on one side and the monarch's head on the other).
@@johnhankinson1929 Not necessarily 'of course'. Coins were not replaced as often as they are now, but some people might not know that. e.g. the £1 coin is already on it's 2nd design and it's only been in use for 40 years. Then as now, it would be a bit of a folly to spend coins made with silver (pre-1947) at face value.
That 1974 childhood photo is adorable. I can just imagine the video theme playing every time future Dr Felton walked into his primary school's entrance.
Here in America it’s not uncommon to find old coins in change and even old paper money. One theory is that as the older generation dies off the kids and grand kids are spending they’re inherited coin collections at stores
During my life I have spent every coin from farthings to crowns, but I have never seen a double florin. I do remember when bun pennies were collected for charity, they stopped being made in 1894.
Very cool! This reminds me of the US $2 bill which is still made every five or so years, but is relatively uncommon in everyday use. I heard a story of a man who thought it would be cool to make a purchase with two dollar bills only to have the store clerk think he was trying to use fake money and call the police. Then even the policeman thought it was fake money and arrested the man. While at the police station, the secret service (who has authority over money issues) was called in to examine the "fake" money and of course told them it was real and that $2 bills are legal tender! I keep one in my wallet! They made a large printing of them in our bicentennial year 1976 (the year I was born) and you still find the 1976 ones in circulation as often as any of the newer printed ones. 😁👍
@@goofyroofy I am American, I never heard anyone say they were bad luck. I keep one in my wallet, I don't think it has given me any bad luck. Its a big country, maybe the bad luck thing is regional. 😁😉
@@timeflysintheshop Yeah my dad used to always say that he was in the northeast US and later in the service so dont know from where he picked that up, but was quite insistent on it as to why they wernt in wide circulation in the US, so im guessing is a northeast thing.
Canadian here, but was not the original US 2$ bill the Susan B. Anthony imprint? I can recall reading about some sort of huge controversy about her, the design or just the fact there was a woman on the bill. As for passing one off, I can recall 'back in the day' friends who would be in the US, and I don't know about now but way back Canadian money would be accepted at least in some parts depending the exchange. These folk would pass Canadian Tire money (it's a thing) off as regular Canadian legal currency, which of course it is not.
In the USA near Detroit, about a decade back or so, a crook unfortunately robbed a senior of his pre WW2 coin and bill collection. The robber apparently didn’t know those bills were worth more than current currency in circulation so he used them at fast food restaurants and connivence shops. The shops didn’t know either since they look largely the same and gave many of them back to customers as change. 1930s bills from what I remember.
What idiots. The robber, the cashiers and the people who took them in change without saying a word. You think I could go to Detroit and start passing Monopoly money?
@@Heike-- The stupidity is everywhere. I've seen businesses in my city refuse to accept $2 bills and dollar coins, insisting that they were clearly fake money because America doesn't have such things.
This reminds me of the $2 bill still in use today in America but not widely known amongst Americans of the younger generation. We also have the Susan B Anthony Dollar coin which baffles clerks everywhere.
America has the largest number of least-used currency anywhere. The 50 cent piece, the Susan B. Anthony dollar, the silver dollar, the $2 bill, the $50 bill, hardly anyone uses any of them. And just try to pass a $100 bill, immediate suspicion.
People have been arrested for using the US two dollar bill. Many store clerks have never seen them and they call the police and an officer arrives who has never seen one either and places the customer under arrest. When the secret service arrives to investigate the "counterfeit" bill, all hell breaks loose and the customer is showered with apologies but may still consider filing a lawsuit. This has happened occasionally and a search of the topic will reveal some interesting stories.
As a pre-decimal kid, there were some very old coins in circulation. Many of these made their way into our hands in the run up to bonfire night, when adults raided their piggy banks in penny-for-the-guy collections. Some were worn smooth by use, with barely discernible dates. Others were clear and had been lost from circulation for years. Even as a kid I wondered how many hands the old ha'pennies, pennies, thruppeny bits and tanners had passed through.
Farthing 1/48 s Ha'penny 1/24 s Penny Thrupennce 1/4 s Groat 1/3s Sixpence 1/2 s Shilling 1 s Florence 2 s Half Crown 2 1/2 s Full crown 5 s My Aunt ( Who is German ) Lived in Ireland for a Few years before the switch to decimal. She being a Mathematician told me about the old system
@@envitech02 but it enabled a great flexibility in counting to different bases. Base 12 for pence, base 20 for shillings, base 10 for pounds, base 2 for half pennies, base 4 for farthings, base 8 for half crowns and so on. Everyone else was stuck in base 10. Nowadays it’s binary - either you have money , or you don’t.
Very interesting! Just over 20 years ago, I used to buy 1oz Silver American Eagles for $3.00 each! There was usually a 4 coin limit. As an amateur numismatist, I've heard it said many times that the price of precious metals is "manipulated" by the city of London.
I still have some of the ‘old money’ that came through in the change in 1980, including a couple of early QE2 pound notes. I remember an older lady showing me how to use the launderette dryer “put your shilling in here……..”. Thanks for the nostalgia hit.
This is the first I have ever heard of a double florin, and I certainly never saw one in the twenty years I used the pre-decimal money. I loved the old coins, getting confused about the Georges and Edwards. There was something special about a Victorian coin, something from another world still in current use. And the obverse sides were pure whimsy - a little wren, a galleon, a portcullis, Britannia .....
The earliest florins introduced in 1849 were inscribed "one tenth of a pound", precisely because they were the first step in a decimalisation that then did not proceed further until 1971. I do remember coming across ones with this inscription in the 1960s, though very rarely as that inscription had been dropped quite early on.
Mark, the word "florin" was not a nickname there were two shilling coins stamped as a "Florin". I've always understood that Florin means a tenth, so a florin coin is one tenth of a pound .
Fascinating. I too here in The U S A, have fond memories of my trips to the candy store. I learned the values of what penny-candy and pop, comic books.
Great video Mark and a good reminder that we should all hold cash lest they take it away and only digital currency be made the only way to pay which i am sure no one wants
@@lapurta22 well, thats your decision but if you don't use it then you run the same risk that the Canadian truck drivers suffered when they protested last year. Justin Trudeau froze all their bank accounts. What would you do if the government did that to you?
This story is insanely delightful, especially given that it's all the result of someone's oversight years ago. While I love your WWII and other wartime videos, Dr. Felton, I do hope you'll continue to branch out into these other little known historical areas. Just as you time-traveled by using old coins, your videos help us time travel and understand history all the more.
This was very interresting. I am from germany and i was as a pupil for several weeks in Great Britain in Reading. This was in the early eighties and i remember the little confusing system with the coins of an earlier age. So now i am a collector of british coins, because it is very interresting to see the difference between the pre decimal and the decimal system.
Hm...as a guy who has a (small) coin collection himself, I believe that this coin (the double Florin) is probably worth something so a shopkeeper not accepting it would be a fool! EDIT: Well, Doc! Nailed it...didn't know the value but 100 British pounds is not that insignificant, compared to the face value :)
*_I'm a retired middle school history schoolteacher. Well now, Felton, I did notice that photo of you about the age of the students who passed through my classes. I can tell by that face, you would have kept me on my toes._*
Legal tender does not mean shops must accept the form of payment. It means payment can not be refused for a dent in relation to court. You won’t be able to spend these coins in shops.
If you've ever wondered what determined the size of US dimes/quarters/half dollars (and "half-dimes" if you go back far enough) it is because prior to 1965 they were all 90% silver. A dollar face value worth of coins always contain the same amount of silver (~ .72 ounces). So 10 dimes, 4 quarters, 2 half dollars (or any combination that adds up to $1) would always contain the same amount of precious metal, thus a quarter is 2.5 times the size of a dime, and half dollar 2 times the size of a quarter (which seems obvious but also explains why a nickel doesn't follow the same sizing standards since it did not contain any silver).
Another brilliant podcast. I'm 71 and oh my, you brought memory flashbacks. I don't however, remember the double florin. Thank you very much for the memories.
When I was working at a hotel last year, I was doing the cash register routine when I saw two $1 coins. The years on them were before 1965 (they were made up of 90% silver). Savvily, I swapped out the two coins with dollar bills. The lesson we all should learn is that old cash can be diamonds when properly appraised.
Рік тому
Same for 5DM, 10DM and quarter dollar coins, many people don‘t know that they sometimes are made up of silver. For example the 10DM coin has a value of 5€ but a silver value of roughly 7€ if it‘s a .625 coin.
Interesting A sidebar: A friend's grandfather died. His safe was found in a secret room behind a bookcase. It also was behind a plastered wall so only he knew where it was. Lawyers, a safe cracker and such where there when it was opened. It contained thousands in the old large currency notes. The type redeemable for gold and silver. The money was deposited into a bank at face value not collector's value. When the estate was divided the bank only gave back the face value - the individual bills having long disappeared. Shyster lawyers and bankers!
I remember as a young lad in the late 1960s being blown away by receiving a "ten bob note" a "bob" being UK slang for a shilling. ( for younger viewers 10 shillings was 120 "old" pence or 50 "new" pence, in other words a "fifty pence note") from an old aunt for my birthday. (So blown away that incredibly I never spent it on sweets, crisps and toys), and indeed still have it to this day. Also gold sovereigns and half sovereigns are also still legal tender in the UK, but I'm not sure I'd like to hand over a gold sovereign in place of a modern day cheapo £1 coin, with the gold in the sovereign now being worth several hundreds of pounds. P.S Well done for sticking to using REAL coinage & notes instead of cards.... unfortunately most people are oblivious to the ongoing drive to introduce CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) Only when it happens will all the "unthinkers" realise what they've sadly led us ALL into.
You forgot the half crown coin (12.5p) which I remember back in the 1960's being a coin of some value not just because it weighed more but was the highest denomination pre-decimal coin in regular circulation.
The US had a twenty cent coin that was only used for a few years in the later part of the 19th century. It was too close in size to the quarter dollar and thus unpopular.
I was born here in Canada in 1961. When I was a boy I had a 5 cent 1945 "Victory nickel" with a prominent "V" in my change. Not knowing any better I spent it on candy! Since my latter teen years I always pick out the old coins from my change and keep them. I especially liked our 1967 centennial issues and the 1973 RCMP "horse quarters."
I always liked the centennial quarter with the lynx on it. I got one in my change from a shop some 15 years ago, and though I don't collect coins I knew it was something vaguely special when I saw it. Sadly, I lost it in a recent move, oh well. I have an RCMP quarter still, a few old pennies with George VI on them, and a few old Canadian $1 bills that I found in an envelope while clearing out my grandmother's belongings after she passed.
When traveling in England in late 1990 I received a well-worn shilling in change at some point. I noticed straight off that while it had a queen on it it wasn't Queen Elizabeth but rather Queen Victoria! This was before December 31 when the old coins stopped being legal tender but after the new 5 pence had been introduced. Needless to say I brought it home to America and I still have it 33 years later as a souvenir of my time in the UK (along with a new Scottish pound note I also kept).
We had the same situation in New Zealand with older non-decimal coins still be widely used and circulated. Oddly, when I worked as a petrol station attendant, I would semi-regularly be presented with silver New Zealand $1 coins. People were trying to spend them wherever they could, as pretty much nobody would accept them as they thought they were junk. But I had been a keen coin collector as a child and new that they were quite valuable so simply swapped my own gold NZ $1 coin for their silver $1 coin. I made about $100 off that within two years of working there, since the silver dollars were collectibles, albeit not worth as much since they'd been removed from their plastic cover and bashed around in circulation for a long time.
I loved 'old money' as we used to call it. The Farthings - a quarter of an old penny, about an eighth of today's penny - went out of use in 1960, the year before I was born. But there was still the Ha'penny (half penny) and Penny, It wasn't at all unusual to have either with Queen Victoria's head on them. Then there was the Thruppenny (three penny) bit, the Sixpence Piece (called coloquially a tanner), the Shilling (a Bob), the Two Shillings (a two bob bit) and the Half Crown , worth two Shillings and Six Pence. The only name I remember for the Half Crown was Half A Dollar, which came, I believe, from the war when a dollar was, give or take, worth five shillings.A few older people have told me it wasn't unusual for kids to beg from American GIs for "half a Dollar". My favourite piece of old money was the Ten Bob (ten shillings) Note which was replaced with the 50p coin. It was printed in beautiful, very dark red ink. Ten Bob was far more money than I ever had, My pocket money when decimal currency came in was two Shillings (10p). Then once when, aged about eight or nine, I found one outside a shop. Good boy that I was, I took it to the shop keeper. That night an old chap, a stranger, came to the house. He'd lost the ten bob note and had been given it back by the shop keeper. He gave it to me as a reward for my honesty. I slept with it under my pillow then next day, my Mom opened a Post Office savings account for me with it. I still have the account but I would rather have the ten Bob Note.
A very interesting video Sir! The nice thing about the size and shapes of British money is as a drunk American service man out on the town in Cambridge I could just reach in my pocket, feel how many pounds and pence coins I had left and knew exactly how many pints I could drink before having to leave for the night. Ahh the Arcadia that is youth.
I was in England in 1973 as a student and encountered quite a few of the old coins. For someone who grew up with the decimal dollar system in the USA, it took some getting used to. Thank goodness you never gave up the pound and converted to the euro.
This is technically you can also include these other denominations the Quintuple Sovereign (first issued 1820), Sovereign and Half Sovereign (1817) are legal tender too, still conform to their original formats and have victorian variants in use. During 1991 Soverigns were issued to RAF aircrews to use in the Gulf War for barganing with local if they were unfortuanate to be downed behind enermy lines.
U.K. coins were the only legal coins in New Zealand until 1933. In Australia all lower denomination silver and copper coins were British until 1910, and continued in use along with Australian coins until the U.K. went off the gold standard in 1931. U.K. pennies could still turn up in change until 1966. Australia issued its own gold coins from 1855 until 1931. Australia did print off paper Marks for use in its Pacific territories that were former German colonies in 1914-15 and are extremely rare today.
Australia still makes gold and silver coins today, (being one of the worlds largest gold producers) and they are still legal tender with dollar face values. However, their purpose is as bullion and they are sold for their metal value which is FAR above the face value, so you never see them in circulation day-to-day.
I was born in 1961 and my most vivid memory of the old coinage is the metallic swish, swish, swish sound of a palmful of the old copper pennies being counted out. And six of those big pennies were literally 'a palmful' for a small boy. In Dublin you'd get a varied mixture of English monarchs' heads with the lovely "hen and chicks" and "Irish harp" designs of the Irish 'EIRE' pennies. All gone now, except for the little harp on the reverse of the Irish 'Euro' coins.
Thank You Sir. I too am a student of history who stands on the shoulders of giants... like you. I have purchased and read many of your books. Prolific, readable, and packed with data. Also like you I have always preferred, and to this day still use cash for most purchases. The modern world seems to want the use of facial recognition and a check of yoru social credit to allow a transaction but I still believe in a handshake and an agreed cash transfer as the means of conducting commerce. By the way you failed to mention one coin that as far as I know is still legal tender: Royal Maundy Coins. Far more rare ( I own one) but I think, one could still use them.
In the nineties I took my 2 sons to Birmingham market where one stall had a pile of pre decimal coins. When I told my sons it was the money we had until the seventies they would not believe me, especially when they saw the threpenny bit 😂
Very interesting. The U.S. has never cancelled the legal tender status of any coin or note, and many Americans--including myself, I think--would regard such an act as a very deep violation of trust. The British psychological relationship with their cash seems slightly different: they they seem far more willing to regard cash as a mere token, and therefore take cash recalls in stride. I'm sure there are interesting historical reasons for this difference; just wish I knew what they were!
I really don't think you have thought this through! The US has not "cancelled" the values of coins basically because you haven't changed them! You are in a very new country with almost zero history, whereas the UK as the rest of the old world has a very long history of different coinage and denominations over many many years. I have an 8 real coin from 1642, which is not usable today. Things move on, changes are made in currency and technology, whereas the old coins were worth exactly their weight in gold or silver, so an 8 real silver coin was always worth the same silver value (everything was harmonised into weight - 1 real was 1/8th the weight of an 8 real piece etc) today coins have basically no precious metal - their value is only worth their promise. So today it makes sense to forge coins and notes - more and more modern designs make this more difficult, as a result, the older versions, (and previous systems) end up being withdrawn. The US hasn't really been around long enough for this to happen to any great extent.
Dr. Felton like you I like old American silver coinage. Especially the Morgan, Walking Liberty and the Peace Dollar. Unfortunately they are hard to find outside coin shops. You rock on with the double florrin. God save the King.
The Florin was so marked for quite some time after it was introduced in Victorian times as a facilitator for then proposed decimalisation. At a value of two shillings it was 1/10 of a pound. I was born in 1953 and we used a lot of actual Victorian coins including those of her early reign and many pennies were so worn that they were all but copper disks with only the faintest relic of their original marks.
G'day Mark, Fascinating numismatic news! I have a similar 'Teller's Tale' from the Antipodes. As I'm around 20 years older than your good self; I can recall Australia's conversion from "English money" to decimal currency: 14 Feb 1966. As in Britain, most of our new coins roughly kept the same physical dimensions; one of our new coins, the 50 cent piece, went from a large round coin to a duo decagon (a 12-sided polygon) then back to a simple circle. I can't remember the order, or dates, this coin changed although I do recall one change was made quickly when it was discovered there was more silver in the coin's alloy than was intended, making each coin 'weigh-in' at considerably more than 50 cents. Gradually, over the years, so many changes to technology have meant that, try as I might, the handling of coins just doesn't happen anymore as all our private banking and purchasing takes place via 'electronic means'. (Sorry, if at this point, you're nodding off...). Anyway, the notable casualty of our decimal conversion was the almost overnight withdrawal of the lowly 'thruppence' which had no place in the new money regime. I actually remember peeved letters to editors bemoaning the absence of the 'three-pence' coin as it had been a long tradition of popping several thruppences into boiled puddings at Christmas time. Tell that one to the loathsome, modern-day 'Food Police', they'll be apoplectic! (Not that I agree with the 'Food Police', but one has to wryly smile at the, then, total absence of concern about implanting little coins that not only presented a 'choking risk' but no regard for where and by whom these coins had been handled prior to them becoming 'lucky treats' to find inside one's portion of Christmas Pud!) My mother at least had the foresight to boil, hopefully sterilising, these keenly sought out coins. If Mother had kept a count of pre-boiled 'Pudding Thrupenny Bits' and only 11 out of 12 turned up after the pudding had been served; well, she kept this knowledge to herself; knowing that 'nature' would take care of the discrepancy later. Funny, no one at our Christmas table ever questioned an uneven tally of tiny coins. It surely was a different time. I could be wrong here but I sort of recall the marketing of 'Lucky Pudding Coins' put out by some enterprising vendor with the selling point that these coins were "...safe for human consumption". I'm more certain that this company went out of business, they may have broken one or two of counterfeiting laws, or at least, several health regulations. Finally, after my dear wife, one birthday, gave me a lovely English-made pocket watch and fob chain; I thought it would be most appropriate to attach a British Gold Sovereign coin to the unadorned end of my new watch chain. Had I been a numismatist I would have known not to go down that road. That truth was discovered after only 10 minutes on a coin collecting website. The Gold Half Sovereign was also rejected for the same, obvious, budgetary reason. Then I discovered a company in, China or India, I think, that among other treats manufactured 'Fake Half and Fake Full Sovereigns' pre-drilled with a hole and attachment made specifically for watch chains. After sending off a relatively tiny amount of money for a few of these 'coins', it struck me that I may have become an unwitting accomplice in an international counterfeiting scheme. The minute I opened the package I knew 'the authorities' would not be after me. When the sellers used the word 'Fake' they meant it! Any L.E.O. or coin dealer could pick these as phoney at 20 paces! Still one of them looks ‘great’ on my watch chain as I usually only wear it for functions after dark and the story behind my ‘ugly’ phoney Sovereign, if anyone asks, is always handy during pre-dinner drinks. Thanks again, Mark for another great 'serve' of history. Cheers, Bill H.
Maybe next week he can make a video about how all the pubs from the 1600s also still are allowed to operate in england. You basically have endless content when talking about things that DIDNT change.
Hello Mark, I'm a 1974 baby too. It was almost mystifying as a child to have these old coins in my pockets. I used to do the drop test; the silver coins had a different sound!! I have quite a little hoard of them, not huge in value, but great memories. When we have CBDC it'll be a different world.... Jon. By the way, being a bit of a military history geek myself, I love your work.
@BB.639.. Shilling coins were still in circulation until the 5p was reduced in size in 1990 and two shilling coins were in circulation until 1992/3 when the smaller 10p was introduced. I certainly remember the old coins in the 1980s.
We returned to the UK from RAF Changi in 1970 and went through the change to decimal currency. As a 9 year old I was the top of my class with the new money as I'd never really grasped the pounds, shillings and pence as a 6 year old and Singapore used dollars and cents so I was familiar with the decimal system. Back then when someone quoted a price they always said it like: "ten new pence" or more often 'ten new pee'. I wonder when they stopped saying the 'new' bit as we migrated at the end of '71. Nice, quirky change from the war stuff we all love. Do more, please.
In Denmark, all old Danish coins with a face value of 50 øre or above can be used as tender (although shops are not obliged to take it) or exchanged at banks to modern currency. The 50 øre limit would restrict the exchange of coins before 1873 cause thats when we started using Kroner and Øre, but Rigsbanksdaler/Rigsdaler coins from 1813-1872 were revalued at 1 daler to 2 kroner, so in theory you could exchange a Daler at face value for a piece of gum... Or the down payment on a small house if sold at auction.
My teen daughter was working at a convenience store here in the US, when some kids came in on bikes and purchased candy and soda with Morgan silver dollars. Yeah, I suspect they raided mom and dad's coin collection..... she did, of course, put here own dollars in the till and kept the coins. She would have gladly given them back had the parents come in with the guilty parties to confess the crime. They never did.
What blithering idiots. How do kids not know what money looks like, or that it's worth more? Jesus that's stupid. Even for kids.
Wow, good kid you have there.
You've raised her well! But how much can she deadlift? 😎
Well today silver is worth about more or less $25 an ounce.
When I worked in a bookstore, I opened a roll of dimes to find a number of Mercury dimes. Another clerk and I replaced those dimes with cash from our pockets.
I'll never forget the time I put a dime into a vending machine and the machine keep spitting it out. I looked at it after 3 tries and found out it was a silver dime. The machine thought it was a slug because silver weighs more than the alloys used in modern coins.
What's interesting about the dime is that it really doesn't say on it how much it's worth. It says one dime. It really should say ten cents. All other coins show their value in cents or in the case of the quarter it says one quarter dollar. But one dime, what's that?
I think it's actually lighter, but same principle.
@@mattcolver1 What's a cent, really? Shouldn't all the coins give their values directly in dollars like the quarter? Or maybe the quarter and all the bills should have their values in cents. Just because dime is less commonly used doesn't make it any less valid of a unit.
@@cameleopard42 cent means one hundredth bro
@@miguelmartins9706 And dime means one tenth. It was a rhetorical question.
Fun fact: the Dutch guilder, used in The Netherlands until the Euro came in our lives, was also known as Florijn, or Florin. Hence the abbreviation FL for the Dutch guilder in the old days….
And the Dutch Rijksdaalder means ''imperial dollar'' and was the basis for the American dollar.
I was about to ...
@@Sarnarath Dollar argueably from Thaler/ Thale / To Tally.
Which country had a Florint ( was that Hungary ?)
@@highpath4776 Hungary still uses Florins. The Scandinavian countries use Kronas (Crowns) and many former British Empire countries use shillings.
Old Gold Sovereigns are also legal tender in the UK due to their £1 face value. In theory, you can use the Sovereign to purchase goods up to £1 in value, but the gold content of the coin is worth far more. Its legal tender status is important for gold investors as it deems any profits made from Sovereigns as tax-free.
Does that count with those coins that are gold, but are technically legal tender in some strange island that also has “pounds” as currency??
@@rattmcpossum yes as well as the one that has “dollars” for currency
I miss the days when pieces of six were still considered to be legal tender. Arrrrgggggghhhhh😂😖🏴☠️
The older coins were made of silver, though much less in post WW1 ones and none after 1947. My great uncle was a meter reader in the 40s, and paid for his house swapping the silver coins he took out with base metal ones. A 1920-1947 shilling is worth about £1.25 in silver.
They lowered the silver content in 1920 from 925 to 50% , so the early ones before 1920 had more silver in them . Smart move by your uncle.
When I was a kid, coins and charms were put in the Christmas puddings, if you found one, it meant good luck though they had to be kept for the next year,.
They would have to be the early silver ones.
@@grahvis , Yes, and our Mother did the same here in South Africa.
However,
She used the old Three Penny Coin, commonly known as a Tiekie, and so our Christmas Pud was called the Tickey Pudding!
In Australia we had 92.5% silver in our coins until 1946 then they devalued our currency to 50% until 1965. In 1966 50c coins had 80% silver but after that nothing. Inflation is great.😂😂😂😂😂😂
It sounds like Brittain did the same thing America did, but we were always Decimal. We went from solid 90% silver for dimes through dollars in 1964 and no silver sometime in the 1970s. Pennies here are almost brass pieces with far more zinc than copper and don't even go on about the base metals in the former silver coins. If I get anymore pre-1964 coins in my change I am saving it for the bullion value and keeping it for after the collapse of the Dollar.
In the UK, "Legal Tender" doesn't merely mean the ability to spend it as currency over the counter. It means it has value towards a debt and the creditor cannot refuse it as payment for court judgements in their favour.
Exactly this. Way to keep pedaling the 'legal tender you have to take it' in shops myth. But what do we expect from this guy's poorly researched 'history' videos.
@@unscentednapalm8547 Poorly researched? Are you new here?
@@unscentednapalm8547 Didn't you just agree with someone who was agreeing with Mark that it is "Legal Tender", then proceed to say that "Legal Tender" is a myth?
@@unscentednapalm8547 No where in this video did Mark say that vendors "HAVE TO TAKE IT". He never said it once you dunce.
@@unscentednapalm8547 This guy makes some of the most highly curated and expertly analyzed history content on youtube and here you are too dumb to even comprehend what you heard from a video you just watched.
US Coin sizes have been unchanged for decades. However, you don't see quarter and half dollar coins from 1964 or before very often. AFAIK, they are still legal tender but they are nearly pure silver and, hence, for the last 50 plus years they are worth more than their face value on silver content alone.
The US has never demonetized coins or bills. Silver certificates can no longer be demanded in silver, but they can be for the face value of the bill.
Yes very true and still legal tender. Afterwards some enterprising Americans visit Canada to buy those silver coins and return to sell at the higher silver value. Canadian coins are same size & face value but Canada stopped making any circulation coins out of nearly pure silver around 1967-69.
Canadian coins have the same denominations as their American counterparts, namely 5 cents, 10 cents, and 25 cents but have different values given the ever-changing exchange rates between the Canadian and American dollars. Canadian coins are also made of different metals than their American counterparts. For example, I tried to use a Canadian quarter in an American phone booth 30-odd years ago and my coin just fell straight into the "rejected" slot; apparently the American coin slot mechanism detects the difference in metals. Canada got rid of its penny a few years back and I haven't seen a 50 cent piece in many decades although I expect they're still legal tender. Our $1 and $2 bank notes were replaced by coins some years back.
Coin collectors on UA-cam get rolls of coins from banks all the time and go through them on camera. They find silver coinage, tons of wheat pennies, the even older Indian head pennies, and all kinds of foreign coins. All still in circulation, fresh from the bank.
@@Heike-- I dont watch the US collectors but are the Indian Head ones worth anything ?
Many years ago I was behind a kid in a comic book store who was trying to buy things with Morgan dollars amongst other silver coins at face value. The kid at the register wouldn't accept them. I immediately bought all of his coins at twice the face value. He was very happy. I was even happier!
As an American (who's been to the UK quite a few times), most of this is unfamiliar to me, but this is a fascinating segment about such an obscure topic. Well done sir!
ask Mark nicely, he might explain to us nickels/dimes and so on. For the UK there is a lot of slang for both mulitiples of a pound(Quid) including old counting (Score for 20 and so) and lower coinage, (Tanner/Joey come to mind)
@@highpath4776 I was in New Zealand in 1984, and mistakenly referred to their 10 cent piece as a dime. The shopkeeper kindly corrected me, but that was probably a dead giveaway as to who's a tourist...
My mum was a clippie on the 19 bus and used to tell me that American tourists were totally bewildered when paying their fare, holding out a handful of pennies, ha’pennies, tanners, bobs, thruppenny bits, half-crowns and florins, telling her to take what she wanted.
@@barrygower6733 My first trip to the UK as a 16 year old in 1980, that was totally me: grab a pocket full of these weird and wonderful coins and let the person take what they needed.
@@barrygower6733 1960s school exercise books had imperial measures on the back cover. Avoirdupois weights, Troy weights for gold, silver and jewels, long measures (fathoms, poles, furlongs), cloth (nails and quarters), heaped measures (bushels, sacks, chaldrons), dry measures (noggins, pecks), and so on. Our dog-eared text books had tests based on some of these, and every conversion had a different multiple and none of them were 10!
I heartily agree, Dr. Felton...the headlong rush to eliminate the use of physical money is unsettling. Just this week here in America talk has begun about a "digital dollar" replacing our currency, which could literally be "turned off" by banks or the government for any number of reasons. Thank you for yet another engaging post and for your usual excellence.
Well spotted - for why else would this channel War Stories be producing a video about coins.
Social credit is already being applied to You Tube channels by demonetisation and shadow banning.
YT channel Triggernometry has had its bank account closed by Tide bank for undisclosed reasons.
The rush to get rid of cash is often dismissed as a 'conspiracy theory'. However, it's hardly a conspiracy when it's happening quite openly. I had predicted the Queen's death might be used as an opportunity to get rid of cash. It hasn't happened, but we are still heading that way.
The bank or govt. can 'turn off' your money whenever they like anyway, though no point making it easier for them by agreeing to anything they want to do.
the main reason for getting rid of cash is to retain the value. Every time you print money (or technically, put it into circulation) you reduce the value of each coin/note. If you put more cash into circulation than it is taken out, the money becomes devaluated, and reversely, if more is taken out of circulation than is put back in, the value increases. By removing cash the value becomes effectively fixed - more or less, as the value depends somewhat on what it's based on in the first place. You also remove the ability to speculate in cash trade, forging money becomes almost impossible, and you incidentially also save money by not having all the extra processes to deal with cash. Only you then create a bunch of other problems that come along with doing everything digitally, like how do you prevent the government from magically create more money to pay for stuff?
It’s getting beyond a joke how many places here in the UK don’t want cash now, and I don’t think covid has helped. I was at my university the other week and left my wallet at home but I always have some change in my bag, I just wanted to buy a drink for £1, they refused to take it and said just have the drink! Generous but what a fuss about accepting a piece of legal tender for payment!
Fun fact, any US Dollar coin or bill ever made and not in too bad of shape is also still totally legal tender as the Dollar was never revalued or taken out of circulation. One of the few currencies in existence with this quirk.
I have a 1935 Silver Certificate Five Dollar Bill. A coin dealer said that they are still relatively common.
@@ktipuss i have one too... ps KEEP CASH or we will lose freedom...
@@OPIXdotWORLD Some freedoms are worthless. Others you lost long ago and they have made no difference to your life and never could in most cases.
Example, you can not leave the USA without a Passport. If you can't get issued one, a boarder guard will say "Halt" and ( in the USA. The rest of us are not pathologically fond of guns so it PROBABLY wouldn't happen here, they would just taze me if I tried it ) then shoot to kill if you keep walking. Or swimming. Or sailing. Or flying.
:\
Not sure about gold coins, as private ownership of gold was banned from 1933 until Nixon took us off the gold standard. Not that anyone's about to turn down a double eagle on a $20 purchase!
Even size change of our change didn't matter. The huge Ike dollar, barely larger than a quarter Susan B. Anthony and the brass Sacagawea and presidential series dollars are all worth the same. And in the 1850's you had large cents and standard size pennies circulating at the same time. It became quite confusing when they tried to introduce a .02 coin the same size as the old large cents that had just been discontinued a few years prior.
Imagine living in the Dominion of Newfoundland with 3 recognized types of Currency ; British , Canadian ,and Newfoundland. Many Canadian Provinces still accepted British currency well into the 1890's, with some Provinces holding out until the early 1900's.
I have pre-decimal one penny coins minted in the reigns of Victoria, Edward VII, George V, George VI, and Elizabeth II - a fascinating march through history.
Indeed. Last year I bought a coin set from the year I was born (1965).
You can even do that with decimal coins. They are marked with the year. Take a look at remember the history the older ones have been through. Every year has a story and the coins have been there to see them. 1982 Falklands War, 1977 Queen's Silver Jubilee, 1990 and 1991 First Gulf war and so on. Although new coins do tend to arrive in circulation later in the year. Take some change out, look at the dates and think of the history they have seen.
Cash must remain!
Being born in Australia in '64 two years before the decimal system came in and as a kid I used to always get sixpences, shillings and florins in my lunch money/change etc. I still remember in the mid-seventies using the old pennies to buy sweets. By the late seventies I got into coin collecting so any I came across went straight to my collection and not the local shop.
I still remember when a coworker thought a customer was trying to pass a counterfeit $5 bill when it was just an old silver certificate. They’re still legal tender but you just can’t get silver for them anymore.
I remember that when I was working at McDonald's in 2003 and I was the only one there who knew what a silver cert was. Fortunately I told the kid that he should keep that cert because it was worth quite a bit being from the depression era one from the San Francisco mint
not being able to retrieve their silver from that certificate is just straight up theft...
@@fierylightning3422 Fiat currency itself is theft.
@@fierylightning3422 Isn't it just? Straight up breaking a legal written and signed contract! (Which is what that paper was)
Canadian coins were made of silver until 1968, when they were replaced by nickel alloys. As the change happened, my Dad let me siphon the silver coins from his pockets. I managed to find a few Edward VII coins still in circulation, though so worn as not to be of much value collection wise. My first visit to England was just after the change to the decimal system. A great relief since my Mother had tried to explain to me the old system and I wanted no part of that. My cousin worked for the post office, and one of the things he did was service pay phones. Frequently, people tried to file down big old pennies (again, one was Edward VII) to 10p size so they could be used in the pay phones-- and of course they'd more often than not get stuck.
dad did this for the leccy meter - filing down a washer on the doorstep until midnight so we could watch the last minutes of a Hammer dracula film
Canada didn't really change there coins except the penny ( circa 2013)1 dollar bill (1986) and 2 dollar bill (1996). We Americans get pennies dimes nickels quarters 1 dollars and very very rarely half dollars and 2 dollars.
@@alexcholagh8330 And more so in places near the border (ie Detroit). Growing up, i would often get pennies with QE2 alongside the wheat and Memorial pennies.
@@cwf1701 I used to get alot of Canadians in port Huron/fort Gratiot I was 10 minutes away from the sarnia border and many of customers are Canadians and they tip well
Being in the USA, all coins and bills issued by the Federal Government are still legal tender. Although like the Double Florin you mention, the value in both materials and collector value far exceed the face value. (I used to work as both a bank teller and a cashier at a store, and would happily buy any pre 1965 silver coins that came my way.) As for the coin not having a denomination, in the US we had a similar problem. The 1883 Liberty Head nickel (5 cent coin) was not marked with the word "Cents", it just had a Roman Numeral V on the back. The problem was the coin was similar in size to the 5 Dollar gold coin circulating at the same time. So it didn't take long for some "enterprising" individuals to gold plate their nickels and pass them off as $5.00 coins. Needless to say the 1884 and beyond versions of the coins had the word "Cents" added.
I've always been confused about an American expression: "Don't take any wooden nickels". Does this indicate that America actually made coins out of wood at some point or, more likely, that scheming individuals once counterfeited legal nickels with wooden ones?
@Hugh Mungus In the early 20th century it was custom for stores and businesses to make "wooden nickels", which were large size tokens essentially doubling as business cards. Sometimes they would include a cash value (usually 5c) redeemable in the store/merchant being advertised.
Are you implying that the US government at the time had more money than cents?
@@hughmungus1767 Wooden nickels were a hoary old joke, stores would pass them out as souvenirs.
@@Heike-- there is a whole load of interesting things about trade tokens (often given as change as no legal requirement to give change for overtendering) or employer payment tokens (Illegal since I am not sure when - used to be common in the mining and railroad construction industries, and such tokens could only be spent in employer owned shops and pubs)
I remember D day for decimal currency very well. I was aged eight at the time. At school we were given plastic decimal coins to familiarize ourselves with the new denominations etc. My mother never got used to decimal and would always need me to convert prices to what she described as, " real money."
I'm with your mum on this. Could never under stand how a sixpence was only worth 2 and a half pence.
mum and dad were littlewoods pools collectors so had to learn. Being a change (sic) to decimal the new currency maths was a doddle to learn )(appart from we still had Oz to Lb to Cwt multiples to learn for doing adding up of some prices)
I still think of it as "real money". The decimal stuff is "Mickey Mouse money".
@@davidlyon1899 You really can't understand it? Are you serious?
@@Xezlec I was 6 years old.
Here in the US I keep using coins and paper bank notes too -- I want as little to do with digital currency as possible! Thanks for another interesting post Dr. Felton!
I think you have twigged what the real reason for this video is. Triggernometry's bank account has been closed for 'undisclosed' reasons by their bank, and at least half the channels I watch have recently been censored, demonetised or shadow banned for wrong think.
This video is a close as Mark dare get to protesting this insidious creep towards central digital currency and the Social Credit System used to control the behaviour and beliefs of a people by its government.
Maybe somewhat related... In the early 1980's I was a Naval Aviator in the US Navy. While deployed to the Mediterranean, using some leave, I met my wife in London for a few days. After this visit I had some leftover British money which included a 1 pound note in excellent condition, I squrreled this bit of currency away in a drawer with all my other money from around the world.
In the middle 90's I was now a Delta Airlines L-1011 co-pilot and had a layover in Brighton. I went to a pub with some crewmembers for a pint. I had brought along the 1-pound note and I handed it to the man behind the bar to help pay for my adult beverage. He looked at it and said that he couldn't take it as payment as it had been replaced by a coin but I could exchange it at a bank. He then looked at the note again and verbally expressed some minor admiration at the fine condition it was in. HA!
he should have kept it, they go to collectors for £1.25+
I kept the last one I received. Quite miss them.
I smell a great UA-cam video upcoming 'living in London by spending only Victorian currency'.
You could do the same here in the states , almost no us legal tender has been ended, only $5000 and higher bills have been de monetized. Our $1,000 bills are still very much legal. Along with half pennies and 20c pieces.
What is the rarest coin you have found whilst running many coin operated businesses
I can see the 7-11 clerk going mental with a half penny lol
@@Whatisthisstupidfinghandle your total is 10.76
*dumps a trash bag full of halfpennies*
@@Whatisthisstupidfinghandle It's much worse than that. Try giving a Sacagawea or Susan B Anthony to a Millennial or Zoomer clerk.
@@blindleader42 even $2 bills. There are videos of cashiers calling the police over them here on UA-cam.
Welcome to the world of numismatics, Mark! I collected British pre-decimals since my early childhood, although in my teens I specialised in ancient coins... but I still keep my entire pre-decimal collection! The double florin is still one of my favorite pre-decimals I have a nice 1887 example, quite a unique coin since it was a short lived denomination or, as we numismatist call them - 'a miscellaneous' denomination.
I was 16 and my family was living in England in 1971, the year of conversion. I loved those coins. The pennies were huge and my neighborhood mates smashed them on the railway tracks. I had saved up an entire cigar box of thrup ‘n bits but ny mother wouldn’t let me bring them home.
@@martinphilip8998 And the ha'penny was good to play on the shovel board, a game that was called 'shove ha'penny'... I made myself a wooden board to play with my friends when I was a kid back in the '80s 😄
@@Numischannel I bought a pair of Churchill crowns from my neighbor girlfriend.-. One late night I went to a Pakistani restaurant. I ordered medium spicy and got a big blister on my palette. The blister is gone but I still have the silver 1945 shilling they gave me in my change. British coins and stamps will always hold my interest. If I was rich, I’d love to own coins from the Tudor period.
@@martinphilip8998 I have a few, both English and Irish, all silver, though, no gold
As interest would have it, up here in the States we had a very similar piece - like the Double Florin it was one-fifth of the full currency unit (in our case, twenty cents), and again like the Double Florin it only stuck around for a few years (was only minted for circulation in 1875 and 1876). Miscellaneous indeed.
Mark, your videos are always money in the bank!
HA - True!!
Indeed! Great comment! 😄
I’m active duty military Mark Felton and just wanna say that after a long day of work watching your videos is very educational…..
In Atlanta Georgia if you use the city bus and rail system and buy your pass from a vending machine you will receive Sacagawea dollar coins as change if you use a larger bill to buy your pass. The Sacagawea is legal tender in the US but because it's rare some establishments refuse to take them and many places have young people working there that have no idea what it is. A similar problem is experienced when using a two dollar bill. It's been in circulation for ages but most people have no idea what it is or if it's legal. But it's worth two dollars. Of course you can't buy hardly anything for two dollars anymore.
Someone left a bag of British coins in a cart at the grocery store I was working at as a teenager. Most were dated 1892-1928. I had them valued once, $4000-5000 for all 52 coins. This was 20 years ago. Need to get them looked at again
I'm a big coin collector and i love the Double Florins.
deny the cbdc coin!
Worth noting that ‘legal tender’ doesn’t mean you can demand to use it to pay for goods in the UK. Shops are free to chose what payment types they accept, including coinage. Its meaning is limited to having the right to use it to satisfy an existing debt.
Sixpences were kept because London Transport had so many fares with sixpence and so many automatic machines taking them it would be impossible for LT to function without them.
Over here in the states, some people still use pre 1965 silver quarters. I’ve even collected some Liberty quarters from the mid 1920’s.
Do they use them at face value? Or melt value?
@@quintrankid8045 face value, $0.25 USD
Another pre-decimal coin that predates the double florin that remains legal tender as of 2023 is the five shilling crown. It survived decimal day being worth 25 new pence. In fact, it was succeeded by new decimal crowns which were minted for commemorative purposes until 1981. The original crowns were struck till 1965, millions in base metal so they are more practical to spend. You could wind up with a crown in your change from 1818 with George III.
Yes Mark, Those Days... I'm also collecting those pre- decimal coins and I'm SOOOO happy having them.
My family went on holiday to England in 1962, the large old pennies and half-pennies from the Victorian era were still in everyday use.
of course they would have done because we were still using them till 1972 , we could use them for a few months after decimalisation in 1971 as the banks carried on accepting them and melting them down
That makes sense as the size, composition and weight of them never changed right up until they were abolished in 1971. You'd have to go way back to the time of George IV to find coins of a different size and weight (even though the basic design on both sides was the same, i.e. Britannia on one side and the monarch's head on the other).
I remember finding a stash of coins at my Grandmothers pub in the Early 00's my 8 year old brain was fried at the thought of a 3 pence piece.
@@johnhankinson1929 Not necessarily 'of course'. Coins were not replaced as often as they are now, but some people might not know that. e.g. the £1 coin is already on it's 2nd design and it's only been in use for 40 years. Then as now, it would be a bit of a folly to spend coins made with silver (pre-1947) at face value.
@@aidy6000 That was called a "throopenny bit" and became rhyming slang for 'tit'.
That 1974 childhood photo is adorable. I can just imagine the video theme playing every time future Dr Felton walked into his primary school's entrance.
Here in America it’s not uncommon to find old coins in change and even old paper money. One theory is that as the older generation dies off the kids and grand kids are spending they’re inherited coin collections at stores
During my life I have spent every coin from farthings to crowns, but I have never seen a double florin.
I do remember when bun pennies were collected for charity, they stopped being made in 1894.
Very cool! This reminds me of the US $2 bill which is still made every five or so years, but is relatively uncommon in everyday use. I heard a story of a man who thought it would be cool to make a purchase with two dollar bills only to have the store clerk think he was trying to use fake money and call the police. Then even the policeman thought it was fake money and arrested the man. While at the police station, the secret service (who has authority over money issues) was called in to examine the "fake" money and of course told them it was real and that $2 bills are legal tender! I keep one in my wallet! They made a large printing of them in our bicentennial year 1976 (the year I was born) and you still find the 1976 ones in circulation as often as any of the newer printed ones. 😁👍
I have Silver Certificate $2 bills. They've been printed for years.
I had a few of those on a trip to the US @ then, my dad, who was american, told me they were bad luck, that why theyre not in wider circulation.
@@goofyroofy I am American, I never heard anyone say they were bad luck. I keep one in my wallet, I don't think it has given me any bad luck. Its a big country, maybe the bad luck thing is regional. 😁😉
@@timeflysintheshop Yeah my dad used to always say that he was in the northeast US and later in the service so dont know from where he picked that up, but was quite insistent on it as to why they wernt in wide circulation in the US, so im guessing is a northeast thing.
Canadian here, but was not the original US 2$ bill the Susan B. Anthony imprint? I can recall reading about some sort of huge controversy about her, the design or just the fact there was a woman on the bill.
As for passing one off, I can recall 'back in the day' friends who would be in the US, and I don't know about now but way back Canadian money would be accepted at least in some parts depending the exchange. These folk would pass Canadian Tire money (it's a thing) off as regular Canadian legal currency, which of course it is not.
In the USA near Detroit, about a decade back or so, a crook unfortunately robbed a senior of his pre WW2 coin and bill collection. The robber apparently didn’t know those bills were worth more than current currency in circulation so he used them at fast food restaurants and connivence shops. The shops didn’t know either since they look largely the same and gave many of them back to customers as change. 1930s bills from what I remember.
What idiots. The robber, the cashiers and the people who took them in change without saying a word. You think I could go to Detroit and start passing Monopoly money?
@@Heike-- The stupidity is everywhere. I've seen businesses in my city refuse to accept $2 bills and dollar coins, insisting that they were clearly fake money because America doesn't have such things.
This reminds me of the $2 bill still in use today in America but not widely known amongst Americans of the younger generation. We also have the Susan B Anthony Dollar coin which baffles clerks everywhere.
I have a few Ike dollars I was given by an Uncle when I was a kid.
America has the largest number of least-used currency anywhere. The 50 cent piece, the Susan B. Anthony dollar, the silver dollar, the $2 bill, the $50 bill, hardly anyone uses any of them. And just try to pass a $100 bill, immediate suspicion.
People have been arrested for using the US two dollar bill. Many store clerks have never seen them and they call the police and an officer arrives who has never seen one either and places the customer under arrest. When the secret service arrives to investigate the "counterfeit" bill, all hell breaks loose and the customer is showered with apologies but may still consider filing a lawsuit. This has happened occasionally and a search of the topic will reveal some interesting stories.
Does anyone feel tempted to acquire a 2 or 3 cent piece and try to spend it?
Too many fake 100s and 50s around
Banks will give you them but don’t want them
As a pre-decimal kid, there were some very old coins in circulation. Many of these made their way into our hands in the run up to bonfire night, when adults raided their piggy banks in penny-for-the-guy collections. Some were worn smooth by use, with barely discernible dates. Others were clear and had been lost from circulation for years. Even as a kid I wondered how many hands the old ha'pennies, pennies, thruppeny bits and tanners had passed through.
Farthing 1/48 s
Ha'penny 1/24 s
Penny Thrupennce 1/4 s
Groat 1/3s
Sixpence 1/2 s
Shilling 1 s
Florence 2 s
Half Crown 2 1/2 s
Full crown 5 s
My Aunt ( Who is German ) Lived in Ireland for a Few years before the switch to decimal. She being a Mathematician told me about the old system
This is a super crazy system! Thank God for the French who invented the metric system!
@@envitech02 those who used the system would disagree including John Lennon among others.
Neat. These are words we in the US hear in nursery rhymes and old Victorian literature, but have no idea what they are.
@@envitech02 but it enabled a great flexibility in counting to different bases. Base 12 for pence, base 20 for shillings, base 10 for pounds, base 2 for half pennies, base 4 for farthings, base 8 for half crowns and so on.
Everyone else was stuck in base 10. Nowadays it’s binary - either you have money , or you don’t.
I really miss the simplicity of the old system.
I'm an Englishman born in 1951 and I've never seen or heard of a double florin. You learn something every day!
Very interesting! Just over 20 years ago, I used to buy 1oz Silver American Eagles for $3.00 each! There was usually a 4 coin limit. As an amateur numismatist, I've heard it said many times that the price of precious metals is "manipulated" by the city of London.
I still have some of the ‘old money’ that came through in the change in 1980, including a couple of early QE2 pound notes. I remember an older lady showing me how to use the launderette dryer “put your shilling in here……..”. Thanks for the nostalgia hit.
This is the first I have ever heard of a double florin, and I certainly never saw one in the twenty years I used the pre-decimal money.
I loved the old coins, getting confused about the Georges and Edwards. There was something special about a Victorian coin, something from another world still in current use. And the obverse sides were pure whimsy - a little wren, a galleon, a portcullis, Britannia .....
Interesting the Double Florin reverse is the same design as the Charles III QEII memorial 50p.
@@highpath4776 That design has been used quite frequently throughout history. First used, i believe, with Charles II on his crowns and 5 guinea coins
The earliest florins introduced in 1849 were inscribed "one tenth of a pound", precisely because they were the first step in a decimalisation that then did not proceed further until 1971. I do remember coming across ones with this inscription in the 1960s, though very rarely as that inscription had been dropped quite early on.
Mark, the word "florin" was not a nickname there were two shilling coins stamped as a "Florin". I've always understood that Florin means a tenth, so a florin coin is one tenth of a pound .
The name of the coin is a corruption of 'Florence' where the coins originated.
Or 24 pence. Lovely old system.
Fascinating. I too here in
The U S A, have fond memories of my trips to the candy store. I learned the values of what penny-candy and pop, comic books.
Great video Mark and a good reminder that we should all hold cash lest they take it away and only digital currency be made the only way to pay which i am sure no one wants
I have not willingly used cash in 20 years
@@lapurta22 well, thats your decision but if you don't use it then you run the same risk that the Canadian truck drivers suffered when they protested last year. Justin Trudeau froze all their bank accounts. What would you do if the government did that to you?
This story is insanely delightful, especially given that it's all the result of someone's oversight years ago. While I love your WWII and other wartime videos, Dr. Felton, I do hope you'll continue to branch out into these other little known historical areas. Just as you time-traveled by using old coins, your videos help us time travel and understand history all the more.
Being quite young, I never would have known! Once again a fun and informative video. Good work! 👍
This video is fascinating. I had no idea that the double florin is still legal. Learn something new every day.
This was very interresting. I am from germany and i was as a pupil for several weeks in Great Britain in Reading. This was in the early eighties and i remember the little confusing system with the coins of an earlier age.
So now i am a collector of british coins, because it is very interresting to see the difference between the pre decimal and the decimal system.
I was a British/German exchange student in the early eighties, living in a tiny town called Stadtoldendorf (near Holzminden). 🇬🇧🤝🇩🇪
@@AtheistOrphan Nice to meet you.
FYI, Legal tender in the UK only concerns the settlement of debts, so a shopkeeper is entitled to refuse payment in cash or coins.
Too many sheep and npcs today. They want to be governed harder. Cash is disappearing by design. Shame.
Hm...as a guy who has a (small) coin collection himself, I believe that this coin (the double Florin) is probably worth something so a shopkeeper not accepting it would be a fool!
EDIT: Well, Doc! Nailed it...didn't know the value but 100 British pounds is not that insignificant, compared to the face value :)
*_I'm a retired middle school history schoolteacher. Well now, Felton, I did notice that photo of you about the age of the students who passed through my classes. I can tell by that face, you would have kept me on my toes._*
Great to hear that Mark is advocating the use of cash! Don't let them take away our freedoms
Legal tender does not mean shops must accept the form of payment. It means payment can not be refused for a dent in relation to court. You won’t be able to spend these coins in shops.
As an avid coin collector, I have a double florin.
Same here (1890).
@@AtheistOrphan nice my one is dated 1889
Very enjoyable video On my first trip to England from 🇨🇦 in 1969 I received a Farthing in change. I still have it!
Not sure how you received that, the farthing ceased to be legal tender in 1961.
If you've ever wondered what determined the size of US dimes/quarters/half dollars (and "half-dimes" if you go back far enough) it is because prior to 1965 they were all 90% silver. A dollar face value worth of coins always contain the same amount of silver (~ .72 ounces). So 10 dimes, 4 quarters, 2 half dollars (or any combination that adds up to $1) would always contain the same amount of precious metal, thus a quarter is 2.5 times the size of a dime, and half dollar 2 times the size of a quarter (which seems obvious but also explains why a nickel doesn't follow the same sizing standards since it did not contain any silver).
Another brilliant podcast. I'm 71 and oh my, you brought memory flashbacks. I don't however, remember the double florin. Thank you very much for the memories.
When I was working at a hotel last year, I was doing the cash register routine when I saw two $1 coins. The years on them were before 1965 (they were made up of 90% silver). Savvily, I swapped out the two coins with dollar bills. The lesson we all should learn is that old cash can be diamonds when properly appraised.
Same for 5DM, 10DM and quarter dollar coins, many people don‘t know that they sometimes are made up of silver. For example the 10DM coin has a value of 5€ but a silver value of roughly 7€ if it‘s a .625 coin.
Love the fact that you dropped this today, a long weekend here in Canada called "Victoria Day."
Love the episodes about money. Please do more
Interesting
A sidebar: A friend's grandfather died. His safe was found in a secret room behind a bookcase. It also was behind a plastered wall so only he knew where it was. Lawyers, a safe cracker and such where there when it was opened. It contained thousands in the old large currency notes. The type redeemable for gold and silver. The money was deposited into a bank at face value not collector's value. When the estate was divided the bank only gave back the face value - the individual bills having long disappeared. Shyster lawyers and bankers!
I remember as a young lad in the late 1960s being blown away by receiving a "ten bob note" a "bob" being UK slang for a shilling. ( for younger viewers 10 shillings was 120 "old" pence or 50 "new" pence, in other words a "fifty pence note") from an old aunt for my birthday. (So blown away that incredibly I never spent it on sweets, crisps and toys), and indeed still have it to this day.
Also gold sovereigns and half sovereigns are also still legal tender in the UK, but I'm not sure I'd like to hand over a gold sovereign in place of a modern day cheapo £1 coin, with the gold in the sovereign now being worth several hundreds of pounds.
P.S Well done for sticking to using REAL coinage & notes instead of cards.... unfortunately most people are oblivious to the ongoing drive to introduce CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) Only when it happens will all the "unthinkers" realise what they've sadly led us ALL into.
I was born in '78 and I remember shillings used as 5p pieces and also the 1/2p coin. I also remember green pound notes before the coin came in....
You forgot the half crown coin (12.5p) which I remember back in the 1960's being a coin of some value not just because it weighed more but was the highest denomination pre-decimal coin in regular circulation.
The US had a twenty cent coin that was only used for a few years in the later part of the 19th century. It was too close in size to the quarter dollar and thus unpopular.
I was born here in Canada in 1961. When I was a boy I had a 5 cent 1945 "Victory nickel" with a prominent "V" in my change. Not knowing any better I spent it on candy! Since my latter teen years I always pick out the old coins from my change and keep them. I especially liked our 1967 centennial issues and the 1973 RCMP "horse quarters."
I always liked the centennial quarter with the lynx on it. I got one in my change from a shop some 15 years ago, and though I don't collect coins I knew it was something vaguely special when I saw it. Sadly, I lost it in a recent move, oh well.
I have an RCMP quarter still, a few old pennies with George VI on them, and a few old Canadian $1 bills that I found in an envelope while clearing out my grandmother's belongings after she passed.
I used to find "Victory" nickels in change into the 70's. And even sometimes the "tombac" nickels and pennies.
When traveling in England in late 1990 I received a well-worn shilling in change at some point. I noticed straight off that while it had a queen on it it wasn't Queen Elizabeth but rather Queen Victoria! This was before December 31 when the old coins stopped being legal tender but after the new 5 pence had been introduced. Needless to say I brought it home to America and I still have it 33 years later as a souvenir of my time in the UK (along with a new Scottish pound note I also kept).
We had the same situation in New Zealand with older non-decimal coins still be widely used and circulated.
Oddly, when I worked as a petrol station attendant, I would semi-regularly be presented with silver New Zealand $1 coins. People were trying to spend them wherever they could, as pretty much nobody would accept them as they thought they were junk. But I had been a keen coin collector as a child and new that they were quite valuable so simply swapped my own gold NZ $1 coin for their silver $1 coin. I made about $100 off that within two years of working there, since the silver dollars were collectibles, albeit not worth as much since they'd been removed from their plastic cover and bashed around in circulation for a long time.
As a coin numismatist , thank you so much for this upload!
I loved 'old money' as we used to call it. The Farthings - a quarter of an old penny, about an eighth of today's penny - went out of use in 1960, the year before I was born. But there was still the Ha'penny (half penny) and Penny, It wasn't at all unusual to have either with Queen Victoria's head on them.
Then there was the Thruppenny (three penny) bit, the Sixpence Piece (called coloquially a tanner), the Shilling (a Bob), the Two Shillings (a two bob bit) and the Half Crown , worth two Shillings and Six Pence.
The only name I remember for the Half Crown was Half A Dollar, which came, I believe, from the war when a dollar was, give or take, worth five shillings.A few older people have told me it wasn't unusual for kids to beg from American GIs for "half a Dollar".
My favourite piece of old money was the Ten Bob (ten shillings) Note which was replaced with the 50p coin. It was printed in beautiful, very dark red ink. Ten Bob was far more money than I ever had, My pocket money when decimal currency came in was two Shillings (10p). Then once when, aged about eight or nine, I found one outside a shop. Good boy that I was, I took it to the shop keeper. That night an old chap, a stranger, came to the house. He'd lost the ten bob note and had been given it back by the shop keeper. He gave it to me as a reward for my honesty.
I slept with it under my pillow then next day, my Mom opened a Post Office savings account for me with it. I still have the account but I would rather have the ten Bob Note.
This American subscriber thoroughly enjoyed this video.
A very interesting video Sir! The nice thing about the size and shapes of British money is as a drunk American service man out on the town in Cambridge I could just reach in my pocket, feel how many pounds and pence coins I had left and knew exactly how many pints I could drink before having to leave for the night. Ahh the Arcadia that is youth.
I was in England in 1973 as a student and encountered quite a few of the old coins. For someone who grew up with the decimal dollar system in the USA, it took some getting used to. Thank goodness you never gave up the pound and converted to the euro.
This is technically you can also include these other denominations the Quintuple Sovereign (first issued 1820), Sovereign and Half Sovereign (1817) are legal tender too, still conform to their original formats and have victorian variants in use. During 1991 Soverigns were issued to RAF aircrews to use in the Gulf War for barganing with local if they were unfortuanate to be downed behind enermy lines.
U.K. coins were the only legal coins in New Zealand until 1933. In Australia all lower denomination silver and copper coins were British until 1910, and continued in use along with Australian coins until the U.K. went off the gold standard in 1931. U.K. pennies could still turn up in change until 1966. Australia issued its own gold coins from 1855 until 1931. Australia did print off paper Marks for use in its Pacific territories that were former German colonies in 1914-15 and are extremely rare today.
Australia still makes gold and silver coins today, (being one of the worlds largest gold producers) and they are still legal tender with dollar face values. However, their purpose is as bullion and they are sold for their metal value which is FAR above the face value, so you never see them in circulation day-to-day.
Thank you Mr Felton I find your programs quite interesting.
I was born in 1961 and my most vivid memory of the old coinage is the metallic swish, swish, swish sound of a palmful of the old copper pennies being counted out. And six of those big pennies were literally 'a palmful' for a small boy. In Dublin you'd get a varied mixture of English monarchs' heads with the lovely "hen and chicks" and "Irish harp" designs of the Irish 'EIRE' pennies. All gone now, except for the little harp on the reverse of the Irish 'Euro' coins.
Did you ever see farthings? A quarter of a penny, with a lovely sparrow inscribed.
Great video! I was born in 79 and I remember counting up 1/2 pence coins to have enough to buy a 10p mixup from the corner shop!
Thank You Sir. I too am a student of history who stands on the shoulders of giants... like you. I have purchased and read many of your books. Prolific, readable, and packed with data. Also like you I have always preferred, and to this day still use cash for most purchases. The modern world seems to want the use of facial recognition and a check of yoru social credit to allow a transaction but I still believe in a handshake and an agreed cash transfer as the means of conducting commerce. By the way you failed to mention one coin that as far as I know is still legal tender: Royal Maundy Coins. Far more rare ( I own one) but I think, one could still use them.
Thank you Dr. Felton for keeping it interesting every time.
In the nineties I took my 2 sons to Birmingham market where one stall had a pile of pre decimal coins.
When I told my sons it was the money we had until the seventies they would not believe me, especially when they saw the threpenny bit 😂
Thanks for something different.
It's always good to learn about coinage.
Very interesting. The U.S. has never cancelled the legal tender status of any coin or note, and many Americans--including myself, I think--would regard such an act as a very deep violation of trust. The British psychological relationship with their cash seems slightly different: they they seem far more willing to regard cash as a mere token, and therefore take cash recalls in stride. I'm sure there are interesting historical reasons for this difference; just wish I knew what they were!
Except the confederate dollars 😅
Why would it be a violation of trust?
I really don't think you have thought this through!
The US has not "cancelled" the values of coins basically because you haven't changed them!
You are in a very new country with almost zero history, whereas the UK as the rest of the old world has a very long history of different coinage and denominations over many many years.
I have an 8 real coin from 1642, which is not usable today.
Things move on, changes are made in currency and technology, whereas the old coins were worth exactly their weight in gold or silver, so an 8 real silver coin was always worth the same silver value (everything was harmonised into weight - 1 real was 1/8th the weight of an 8 real piece etc) today coins have basically no precious metal - their value is only worth their promise.
So today it makes sense to forge coins and notes - more and more modern designs make this more difficult, as a result, the older versions, (and previous systems) end up being withdrawn.
The US hasn't really been around long enough for this to happen to any great extent.
Dr. Felton like you I like old American silver coinage. Especially the Morgan, Walking Liberty and the Peace Dollar. Unfortunately they are hard to find outside coin shops. You rock on with the double florrin. God save the King.
The Florin was so marked for quite some time after it was introduced in Victorian times as a facilitator for then proposed decimalisation. At a value of two shillings it was 1/10 of a pound. I was born in 1953 and we used a lot of actual Victorian coins including those of her early reign and many pennies were so worn that they were all but copper disks with only the faintest relic of their original marks.
G'day Mark, Fascinating numismatic news! I have a similar 'Teller's Tale' from the Antipodes. As I'm around 20 years older than your good self; I can recall Australia's conversion from "English money" to decimal currency: 14 Feb 1966. As in Britain, most of our new coins roughly kept the same physical dimensions; one of our new coins, the 50 cent piece, went from a large round coin to a duo decagon (a 12-sided polygon) then back to a simple circle.
I can't remember the order, or dates, this coin changed although I do recall one change was made quickly when it was discovered there was more silver in the coin's alloy than was intended, making each coin 'weigh-in' at considerably more than 50 cents.
Gradually, over the years, so many changes to technology have meant that, try as I might, the handling of coins just doesn't happen anymore as all our private banking and purchasing takes place via 'electronic means'. (Sorry, if at this point, you're nodding off...).
Anyway, the notable casualty of our decimal conversion was the almost overnight withdrawal of the lowly 'thruppence' which had no place in the new money regime.
I actually remember peeved letters to editors bemoaning the absence of the 'three-pence' coin as it had been a long tradition of popping several thruppences into boiled puddings at Christmas time.
Tell that one to the loathsome, modern-day 'Food Police', they'll be apoplectic!
(Not that I agree with the 'Food Police', but one has to wryly smile at the, then, total absence of concern about implanting little coins that not only presented a 'choking risk' but no regard for where and by whom these coins had been handled prior to them becoming 'lucky treats' to find inside one's portion of Christmas Pud!)
My mother at least had the foresight to boil, hopefully sterilising, these keenly sought out coins. If Mother had kept a count of pre-boiled 'Pudding Thrupenny Bits' and only 11 out of 12 turned up after the pudding had been served; well, she kept this knowledge to herself; knowing that 'nature' would take care of the discrepancy later.
Funny, no one at our Christmas table ever questioned an uneven tally of tiny coins.
It surely was a different time.
I could be wrong here but I sort of recall the marketing of 'Lucky Pudding Coins' put out by some enterprising vendor with the selling point that these coins were "...safe for human consumption". I'm more certain that this company went out of business, they may have broken one or two of counterfeiting laws, or at least, several health regulations.
Finally, after my dear wife, one birthday, gave me a lovely English-made pocket watch and fob chain; I thought it would be most appropriate to attach a British Gold Sovereign coin to the unadorned end of my new watch chain.
Had I been a numismatist I would have known not to go down that road. That truth was discovered after only 10 minutes on a coin collecting website. The Gold Half Sovereign was also rejected for the same, obvious, budgetary reason.
Then I discovered a company in, China or India, I think, that among other treats manufactured 'Fake Half and Fake Full Sovereigns' pre-drilled with a hole and attachment made specifically for watch chains.
After sending off a relatively tiny amount of money for a few of these 'coins', it struck me that I may have become an unwitting accomplice in an international counterfeiting scheme.
The minute I opened the package I knew 'the authorities' would not be after me. When the sellers used the word 'Fake' they meant it! Any L.E.O. or coin dealer could pick these as phoney at 20 paces!
Still one of them looks ‘great’ on my watch chain as I usually only wear it for functions after dark and the story behind my ‘ugly’ phoney Sovereign, if anyone asks, is always handy during pre-dinner drinks. Thanks again, Mark for another great 'serve' of history. Cheers, Bill H.
Hmm, Dr. Felton just don't run out of things to educate the public about. It's a bit like the Fountain of Youth, only with knowledge. 🙂
Maybe next week he can make a video about how all the pubs from the 1600s also still are allowed to operate in england. You basically have endless content when talking about things that DIDNT change.
I love the confectionary at the start, I’d forgotten about the “Bar Six” used to love them!
Hello Mark,
I'm a 1974 baby too. It was almost mystifying as a child to have these old coins in my pockets. I used to do the drop test; the silver coins had a different sound!! I have quite a little hoard of them, not huge in value, but great memories.
When we have CBDC it'll be a different world....
Jon.
By the way, being a bit of a military history geek myself, I love your work.
@BB.639.. I beg to differ on that one.
@BB.639.. Shilling coins were still in circulation until the 5p was reduced in size in 1990 and two shilling coins were in circulation until 1992/3 when the smaller 10p was introduced.
I certainly remember the old coins in the 1980s.
We returned to the UK from RAF Changi in 1970 and went through the change to decimal currency. As a 9 year old I was the top of my class with the new money as I'd never really grasped the pounds, shillings and pence as a 6 year old and Singapore used dollars and cents so I was familiar with the decimal system. Back then when someone quoted a price they always said it like: "ten new pence" or more often 'ten new pee'. I wonder when they stopped saying the 'new' bit as we migrated at the end of '71. Nice, quirky change from the war stuff we all love. Do more, please.
Based
Excellent video. I especially liked the line about being "stark raving mad" Made me laugh! Keep up the good work Mark!
Rule Victoria. Victoria rules the cash 😉
In Denmark, all old Danish coins with a face value of 50 øre or above can be used as tender (although shops are not obliged to take it) or exchanged at banks to modern currency.
The 50 øre limit would restrict the exchange of coins before 1873 cause thats when we started using Kroner and Øre, but Rigsbanksdaler/Rigsdaler coins from 1813-1872 were revalued at 1 daler to 2 kroner, so in theory you could exchange a Daler at face value for a piece of gum... Or the down payment on a small house if sold at auction.