Today????
Really??? Why is the coin dated 2014?
The Royal Mint has begun pumping out the fetching 12-sided pound coins which will hit the UK's streets in March next year. The retro-styled nugget - which pays homage to the classic threepenny bit - is rolling off the production line at the rate of 4,000 a minute. It's heralded as "the world’s most secure coin in circulation …
..and why must every announcement from the UK always say "Britain leading the world, world's best, world leading, world's most...."
Often it's clearly not true and often it turns into a fiasco.... why not just say, in this case, "with greatly improved security" or "with a cunning system designed to reduce counterfeiting".
Oh well, let's hope this one turns out OK.
"Given inflation,mightn't the Pound be now worth what thruppence was then?"
Not exactly, but close enough. 80 thruppences = one decimal pound by 1971 decimal conversion. By consumer price indexes there has been roughly 1:40 price increase between 1946 and 2015.
So one 1946 thruppence would be worth half a quid these days . For 1:80 CPI ratio we have to go back to 1916.
Actually the UK mints coins for many other countries, and is actually largest exporter of minted foreign currency in the world - it's been doing it for centuries.
There's a few unusual "accidents" whereby a coin has had two different countries sides when dies have been mixed up (known as a mule), not as common as something like the undated 20p, and much easier to spot than the very rare 1970 halfpenny with the early obverse but usually rare enough to suspect it wasn't completely accidental.
They actually seem to have quietly dropped that name since 2014 - the link from the article redirects to a different page. Can't think why.
The potential security features are intriguing though. Could the coins, rather than being just a lump of metal, actually contain some kind of chip?
Most coins have basic "counterfeit" measures, even the humble £1 coin as it is.
http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/counterfeit-one-pound-coins
Same as notes, most people know about the ribbon, but ask them about folding up the note and the actual denomination hologram and they will be baffled.
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>Isn't ground breaking technology usually call a shovel?
I'd call it a spade. A shovel is used for, er, shovelling material that is already loose like sand, snow or gravel, whereas a spade will cut into mud, clay, turf and the like.
Harder substrates - rocks - will call for picks, bars, explosives and other handy tools.
Why don't they use it as an excuse to retrofit them all with contactless technology and largely do away with coins? I'm sick and tired of having to have the right cash in hand to park at hospitals or stations...
And given that even 8 year old kids can get their hands on contactless cards, I don't buy that they're not ubiquitous enough. Fitting contactless to most parking meters would probably mean they need to be emptied an order of magnitude less often, which would surely pay for itself anyway.
In fact, if kids could only use contactless cards on vending machines, that would be a bonus - I frittered away so much money on crap from vending machines when I was a kid that my parents were clueless about - if I'd had to use a contactless card which reported back to my parents everything I was spending, I'd have been far healthier and more careful with my money...
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In the meantime, all the parking machines get blocked up with the new coins giving the users the excuse not to pay the truly outrageous fees that many conncils use these days.
and in other news
Businesses in the high st report an upturn in trade that coindsides with the problems with the parking machines.
Cause and effect?