Coin Info
3d to a £1 – the rebirth of Britain’s most popular coin design
This month our current £1 coin will be scrapped in favour of a newer design, which will be far more difficult to counterfeit.
George Osborne tweeted this photo of the brand new £1 coin
The new design
Back in 2014, George Osborne tweeted an image of himself holding one of these new and improved £1 coins.
But it wasn’t the supposed high-tech security features and new bi-metallic design that caught my eye, it was the 12-sided shape, which has so clearly been reprised from the famous quarter shilling or thrupenny bit.
Mind you, the pronunciation of “thruppeny” depended very much on which part of the country you were from. It varied from “throop-ence” to “thrupp-ence,” or as the Queen probably said, “threpp-ence.” Likewise in conversation, people referred to it as a “throop-nee”, “thrupp-nee” or “threpp-nee” bit.
“Suitably British,” is how Royal Mint’s Director of Circulation describes the new £1 coin, and no wonder with a pedigree like that.
Divided Opinion
The new 12-sided design found popularity during World War II
Initial reaction to the new £1 has been mixed, but history has shown that a bit of early scepticism is inevitable.
When the thrupenny was first introduced in a 12-sided design in 1937, its radical shape courted a lot of hostility, particularly from men who feared the numerous edges would wear down their trouser pocket linings.
This nickel-brass version was an upgrade of the old silver threepence or “Joey” which was very small and easily lost.
This was the coin traditionally used in Christmas puddings. The silver threepence continued to be minted for a while, perhaps because the Mint was unsure whether the new coin would be accepted.
Rise in popularity
During Edward VIII’s brief era 12 coins in the new design were struck for experimental purposes and sent to a slot machine manufacturing company for testing. The whereabouts of six of those 12 are known. However, the other six are still out there somewhere and their rarity commands very high prices. An example was sold at auction in 2013 for £30,000. The mystery surrounding them remains a well-told coin collector’s story.
The 12-sided coin design grew on the British public. It found popularity during the Second World War when its distinctive size and shape made it the easiest coin to recognise during blackouts. In 1943, 103,000 were minted. When Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne, the threepenny was the very first coin to bear her portrait, and by the time of decimalisation, 1.2 billion had been issued for circulation.
Critics argue that the £1 design is merely the Chancellor’s attempt to appeal to the patriotism and nostalgia of a key section of the electorate. Regardless of his intentions, this new-look retro £1 could yet find its way into the hearts of the British public.
Would you recognise hidden treasure?
We all dream of finding hidden treasure. Hoards of gold coins in the garden, buried jewels in the allotment or silver in the attic. But would you actually recognise treasure if you saw it?
It’s not such a silly question! When retired security systems installer Bruce Campbell found a rare Edward VI shilling buried in the mud on Vancouver Island, he had no idea of the significance of his find. He only started hunting for treasure with a hand-held metal detector because he was ‘sick of TV and getting fat’.
The Edward VI shilling – minted in London between 1551 and 1553 – could turn history on its head and prove that Sir Francis Drake discovered Canada before the Spanish.
Treasure is waiting to be found in the most unexpected places. Five years ago Terry Herbert, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, uncovered the UK’s most valuable hoard as he searched a field near his home. The Anglo-Saxon hoard, believed to date back to the Seventh Century, contains around 5kg of Gold and 2.5kg of silver and was valued at over £3m.
Tales like these bring out the treasure hunter in all of us, but do you actually know what treasure is?
In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Treasure Act defines treasure as
objects or coins that are at least 300 years old and contain a minimum of 10% gold or silver. If the object is of prehistoric date it will be treasure provided any part of it is precious metal.
You can read the full Act and find out more about responsible metal detecting on the National Council for Metal Detecting’s website http://www.ncmd.co.uk/treasure%20act.htm
But if long days hunting around in cold and muddy fields are not your cup of tea, don’t despair – you might have more modern treasure right here to hand in your pocket, so remember to keep checking your change with Change Checker!
Do you own the UK’s rarest 50p piece? And it’s not Kew Gardens.
Have you heard about the 50p coin that many thousands of people have found in their daily pocket change which was sold on e-Bay for prices upward of £100.00. Or to put it another way, 200 times its actual value?!
Only 109,000 1992 EC 50p were issued into circulation – roughly half of the Kew Gardens 50p.
It was all because in 2014 The Royal Mint announced that the Kew Gardens 50p coin is the UK’s most scarce circulation coin, with just 210,000 pieces ever been placed into circulation. The result was a media storm and the inevitable overnight ramping of prices.
Half the circulation of the Kew Gardens 50p
But what few people realise is that there is an even rarer UK 50p piece that was issued in half the number of the Kew Gardens coin – just 109,000 coins.
The coin was issued in 1992 to mark the EC Single Market and the UK presidency of the Council of Ministers – perhaps not the most popular of topics, which maybe was the reason so very few were pushed out into circulation. But of course, its lack of popularity at the time, is the very thing that now makes it Britain’s rarest 50p coin.
Sadly, however hard you search, unlike the Kew Gardens 50p, you will not find this one in your change. That’s because it is one of the old-sized 50p coins that were demonetised in 1998.
The coin itself was designed by Mary Milner Dickens and pictures the UK’s place at the head of the Council of Ministers’ conference table. The stars represent each of the nations’ capital cities placed in their relative geographical position.
But it won’t be the coin’s clever design that will guarantee its numismatic interest for years to come. It is its status as the UK’s most rare circulation 50p is what will intrigue collectors and have them searching and saving up in years to come.
If you’re interested in coin collecting, our Change Checker web app is completely free to use and allows users to:
– Find and identify the coins in their pocket
– Collect and track the coins they have
– Swap their spare coins with other Change Checkers
Sign up today at: www.changechecker.org/app