Coinage Report

State of the realm report coming up.

Having just emptied the pennies box, this is the result.

Out of £95 worth of coinage, only £7 was ones and twos.

Out of the ones and twos, with the help of a magnet, slightly less than £2 of those were actual copper. The government having seen the real value of that and had it away with the real ones already.

Its illegal to melt down a legal tender coin for its metal content, but that hasn't stopped the Royal Mint, obviously with the agreement of the government, from taking the copper out of circulation, melting it down & flogging it to the highest bidder.

Our currency is now worthless.

Out of the rest of the pennies box I found a silver coin from Panama, passed as a 5p piece Worth far more than that.

And loads of euro's, easy to pass if you don't have your glasses on.

 

Probably butlins aswell,they love taking your 2ps in amusment machines..wonder how many they find

 

The way to get round the illegal bit is to hoard the copper & then wait for the Royal Mint to withdraw the said coins.

I.E. its not illegal to melt down old pennies from pre decimal coinage now, as its not legal tender.

Likewise, if you have any pre 1920 silver coins, they are sterling silver and have a decent value, even if they are worn and not of value to a collector.

 

So what are they making them of now Zigs please?

 

When I worked on the gaming machines, I used to swap the Florins for two shilling pieces :-)

Jack McH

 

Steel with a thin coat of copper, pretty much worthless.

Henry the eighth debased the coinage after using it to pay for the cold war against the roman emipire. I have a coin from his son's reign (Edward the 6th?) that is copper with a gold leaf over it, he couldn't afford to make the nation's coinage actually worth something either.

So now we have a similar situation.

All the silver has long since gone from the currency. Now they are taking all the copper out.

All we have is some bits of metal that have the same weigh in value as an empty baked bean can and some bits of paper that have a "promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of one pound"

If you walked into the Bank of England tomorrow with your bit of paper promise and asked for them to honour that promise, they would politely usher you to the door.

 

The Panama silver coin is worth $2, better than the 5p it was slipped to me as

 

So with the coins now worthless as well as the cash in our pockets, isn't it about time we abandoned money and went back to bartering then?

 

That's pretty much how it works already round here.

 

I will tarmac your drive, If you will give me a refurbished PC for my school kids computer

Or when I was 5 put six fresh eggs on the wall and get an enamel bucket full of coal back

Ooops hope Hugh Gaitskell is not on here tonight

Jack McH