Why Is The UK 2 Pence Coin So Big? A Rambling Look At British Currency 

Here, our 2 euro cents is exactly/roughly worth 2 euro cents.

@@thecurrencyaggregation9103 Tengo varias de su amigo me llamo Francisco soy Argentina Latinoamérica de Rosario Santa Fe

Here, our floor is about/exactly worth a floor

Wow! I didn't know that your currency is so similar to ours! A toonie is about 2 dollars!!!

The copper 2ps are worth more in melting

We all love coin flex

I prefer CoinSquirt

Atomic Shrimp I use it regularly. I have convinced my colleagues that coinsquirt is the way forward for cryptocurrency. Seriously though I’ve been wondering for a while, did you make that website?

Yeah, I made it because I was hoping to lure some scammer into thinking I've paid him via CoinSquirt, then make all of the 'withdraw balance' options fail in different ways.

@@AtomicShrimp Haha I hadn't seen that website before, those are some top-rate liquid puns

And it's funny, because Scottish Money isn't legal tender, and in fact legal tender doesn't mean what most people think it does. Legal tender is a term that only applies to settling debts, and only includes a certain amount of copper coins (something like up to 20p in 1 pence pieces and up to a pound in 2's.) and then the regular Royal Mint currency. Edit: And shops are entirely able to not take legal tender at all, or only take legal tender, or really take anything they want as payment.

Oliver is correct! But also, genveers is right - I think of all the times I have heard the term 'legal tender' spoken in public, it was in a Scots accent maybe 80% of those times

Same for Northern Ireland's note lol

i had the same with manx notes much more recently!

@@mysterycrumble What? There are Manx notes? 😯 Wow. The UK currency system is both very cool and uncool. Cool because it's a very complicated system that even kids use. And uncool because it's very tedious for travelers, especially foreign ones. 🤔

I cannot believe i missed this. Shameful

Yes, ICH DIEN is written on the coin. TO SERVE in German, makes you wonder who you're serving.

@@steviewonder7495 ; Not "To serve" but "I serve". "the motto of the Prince of Wales, adopted with the crest of ostrich feathers after the battle of Crécy (1346), from John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, who was killed in the battle."

@@FirstDagger is it german or not?

@@steviewonder7495 ; Used by the King of Bohemia, the state also known as the Czech Kingdom in English literature. The correct form as apparently used on Black Prince's grave, is "Ich diene". But the English never could pronounce German pronounced words (e.g. Marine), so that is probably why it was changed to the more slang sounding version unless they mean it to be a Past form like "diente".

Yes, it was like watching a pileup being cleared to become a trainwreck.

I loved that video so much information!

An advert would definitely ruin the flow of explanation

Pasha Staravoitau tbh same

Pasha Staravoitau no, my interests are more get out there and do something

I'm pretty sure I saw product placement for the Royal Bank of Scotland plc.

WythenshawePhil that is incorrect, Scotland does not exist and is purely a myth

It IS my own currency, and I even lived through decimalisation, and I know more about my currency now too.

My grandad still does always says "I made 2 pund and sixpence back when I worked in the shipyard, we used to sly the sixpence out of our paypacket and say we got underpaid, we always got the extra sixpence until they started stapling the envelope" haha that crafty old bugger

Same

Hey @Disturban I know it’s stupid of me to ask this but could you give me a shoutout

@JDQ 240p in a pound would be so much easier to split. Can't even divide 100 by three

Yes, just imagine what we had to do in primary school adding up long additions like £1/2/6 + £2/13/9 + £4/17/6 .... etc. Even more complicated than binary! But we were used to it and there was indeed resistance to the change.

I disagree. He used to to make much better nostalgia jokes in the past.

Colonel Chestbridge i remember back in the day having to walk uphill both ways when i went to my nostalgia classes at school.

@@stupidas9466 In the snow. Barefooted!

School? You were lucky to go to school. At that age I had to work in the nostalgia mill ánd pay the mill owner for permission to come to work. All that on -30 minutes sleep and a lump of cold poison for breakfast.

Nostalgia for nostalgia

explains why so many exist on ebay today, wish they did it for the new £1 coin

Like I got (I don't know about other € countries) when the € was introduced. A few have them as the start for their (€)coin collection, but most got €3.88 to spend how they liked (sweets).

Kids did this in the US too when the US Mint changed the design of the Washington quarters in 1999. Everyone in my class got 5 quarters (the first five states). All the coins ended up in the vending machine lol.

I won a shiny new ½ crown for a poem I wrote at school. I decided to keep it as memento. The next day I spent it.

SUPER NEIL HARRIS. Millllllll

And yet time is still non-decimal - 24 hours in a day. 60 seconds, 60 minutes. 7 day week. Odd numbers of days in months. 365 or 366 days per year. hmmm

ana player

@@thriizii I certainly used to be, haven't played Overwatch in years now but I haven't change my pic either... still her icon is pretty cool.

@@christinasharp420 true, ana is cool in general

pre-decimal currency was based around 12 for its divisibility. if a pound (weight) of something cost 1 shilling, you could buy a quarter-pound, third of a pound, half-pound, two thirds of a pound, three-quarters, or five-sixths of a pound for a whole number of pennies; something you can't do with decimal currency. On an unrelated note, the British phrase 'spend a penny' meaning to visit the toilet, dates back to the Great Exhibition of 1851 where the cubicle door locks were operated by inserting an old penny coin

@@nrellis666 : These days it costs at least 20p to "spend a penny" :-(

It's a mystery to most of us in the UK too!

Dammm as I started reading your comment that part of the video came on

You laughed for 5 minutes over that? lol

I think there are patterns that can do it more efficiently than 1,2,5, but they are difficult for humans - I remember watching a video by Numberphile or some other channel - the coins were weird awkward values - like 1p, 3p, 7p... 37p etc

The ones, I get. The fives, I can understand. But other than the old system, why exactly do we need the twos again?

@Angelic Dirt it's about minimising the number of coins you have to use to make change; if you have 1,2,5 and you need to give 9p change, it's 3 coins:- 5+2+2. If you don't have 2p coins, 9p change requires 5 coins:- 5+1+1+1+1 The same holds true at the other levels, so to make 99p change: 50+20+20+5+2+2 (6 coins) if you don't have 2 or 20, it's 50+10+10+10+10+5+1+1+1+1 (10 coins)

@@AtomicShrimp Neat. And thanks. :3

@@AtomicShrimp Aye it's a balance. You can have an extra 25 pence (like a US quarter) which'd minimise coinage needed in some ways, but also add extra confusion by introducing a new coin into circulation.

....I'm happy for your nostalgia but ultimately glad for the stress-levels of every man, woman and child of the Brtish Isles that no longer has to deal with the mathematical train wreck which was "the old way"

@@vice.nor.virtue I bet that people who were familiar with (maybe grew up with) the system would not at all consider it stressful - it was probably as normal as going through all the equations we are facing when calculating whether we can afford something or what coins to pick in order to pay for something within the system that we are familiar with.

@@fabianrose3688 Yes I'm sure if you grow up with it it's fine, but to people from foreign markets (that the UK deals with a lot, we are very much a country of international trade) it's a goddam nightmare. This is similar to learning a language as a native, or emmegrating to a country and having to learn it as an adult. For me, learning German is a massive hastle and is such an unweildly language that I can't even believe it exists in the way it does. Most young people here really like english because it's easy to use and easy to learn. Why use a bulky outdated system of currency, when an obvious new and intuitive version exists everywhere else and everyone uses it?

I've got the same case of _feeling nostalgic for something I've never actually experienced._ There's just something I find really comforting about the idea of the pre-decimal coins. It's probably the same feeling I had as a child, when having a few _coins_ in your pocket made you feel rich. It would also be good for children today to experience divisions beyond _10s._

The old money is now worth way more than it used to be just because its vintage

Solar how much are old pound coins worth? Non bi metal like the original pounds that came out??

You were given old money but if you want some money sell them on amazon or eBay and you will get good money for them

Or u can keep them in a coin collectors book

Interesting as I never knew the pre decimal stuff in detail. Somehow I don't remember the 50p change. Huh, maybe because the freak out people had over the new 5p being hard to handle. And the panic over getting rid of your old pound coins. Coz they were actually worth something.

I'd never think to see you here

I'm a huge fan

Hello Regit! Love your vids!

@Redblade Yikes, so it was worth one sixteenth of a penny?? Did the pound suddenly, like, gain much more value or something? Because even accounting for inflation I couldn't imagine what would be worth that small an amount.

@@Scum42 it's called inflation I guarantee the currency of your country has also gone through the same thing

I had totally the same reaction!

@@thissmithymanga7119 I literally mentioned inflation in my comment lol

@Redblade definitely never see a white fiver...

I used to work as a bar tender and the landlord told me not to take them because we don't know how to check for fakes.

Guernsey pounds are actually not legal tender in the UK. They can be converted 1:1 for UK pounds, though. Despite this I do occasionally see Guernsey coins in my change.

I lived in Guernsey for 5 years,lovely place, any Corona over there?

Tim. No krona. They use sterling!

I have some 30 year old Jersy notes from when my mom visited the island. Went to the UK last year and tried to pay with those money. They didnt take the notes but the coins because it was stirling but from Jersy. It is absurd the amount of different notes and coins in the UK that are still valid. I love it.

word

We don't use the Imperial system. never did. The Imperial system was defined in 1824, after we left the empire.

@@QuixoteX You still use it.

America has also had 16 different value coins tho

@@QuixoteX that's still called the imperial system if you like it or not

What a miserable git eh?

Oh my! What gauche oaf! I rode the merry go round many a time as a child, and if mummy or daddy had encountered such an ignoraminous nincompoop, father would have had some very harsh words with him indeed; he would have called him a simpleton bungler and bid him fair well!

@@cretinousswine8234 Let me guess, you're American?

Cheers steve

Imagine having to learn long division Q: Divide £13 3s 63/4p by 254 Things I learned in primary school which I'll never do again :)

k currency

the coins aren't actually that difficult to get. i myself have a collection of a load of old pennies, the oldest dating back to the victorian era

@@FlameBunny did you even read the comment?

yeah most of this stuff really isnt rare, most of the pennies and half pennies you can buy for literal pennies

@@FlameBunny it's almost like the comment said exactly that

Coming from you, that's a big deal. Love your videos.

Ha dumm

Your here!

Hello

Hello

Now you regret that decision?

@@ghostdog4330 he was a child. you aren’t a banker. be quiet.

@@ghostdog4330 the hell?

@@swored. You're right I've deleted comment. I must have been drunk or something..

I was born in 1970 and there is *one* echo of the old 10 bob note that I remember...the commonly used phrase in my youth that a particularly flamboyant homosexual was "bent as a nine bob note". Bent in this regard being used in a double meaning of both "homosexual" and "counterfeit".

@@d2factotum ...and if they were very bent they could change it into 3 threes...!!

Fafski11 I’m surprised you didn’t know about a 10 bob note: I was born in 1991 and still remember the phrase ‘as bent as a 9 bob note’, lol

In New Zealand a shilling and a florin* were the same size and value as a ten cent and twenty cent coin. Australian florins were also the same size and approximate value, but they weren't always accepted in the arcade gaming machines.

Bewilderbeastie : I think you mean it made no sense to you. Subjective rather than objective. If people like your mother and tens of millions of others understood it quite easily it seems that your inability to understand it says more about you than it does about pre-decimal currency. Don't knock what you don't understand.

@@stevetaylor9846 you're an idiot.. People say "that makes no sense" to say it made no sense to them. Obviously it made sense to the person explaining it, just shut up

@@stevetaylor9846 its safe to assume that they mean subjectively. dont be a drama llama

'` : No. You're the idiot. People make subjective statements in the form of objective statements. Illogical - like you.

sulociou : It is by no means safe to make that assumption except according to your logic. And it's obvious where that lies, isn't it?

How was the weight ratio kept after the material change?

How else could we uniform sales of "commodities "

Penny an eighth

@Black.Flaps .Dont.Match metric oz and the imperial oz have narrowed the gap.. its weird

@@aresgood1 They kept the weight ratio by changing the thickness of the coin instead.

I remember the 10p & 50p changing have still come across them in change relatively (within the last 5 years) recently. I'm too young to remember the 5p changing but I'm sure I've seen a couple in change some years back. Not recently, but I also remember getting old Penny's (mistaken for 2p?) in change with Victoria, Edward VII & George V on them! That pre-decimal Penny was the same for over 100 years so it's mad to think how old some of the coins in your change could be!

Yep... Wagon Wheels are much smaller... I recall they were the size of Morris Minor wheels... now they are the size of an old 10p coin! Unless my eyes shrank as I aged!

I was born in 1991 and I distinctly remember the £2 being introduced - I would have guessed it happened in the early noughties - but I never noticed the 50p shrink. As you say, I probably just put it down to growing bigger myself.

This can be proved by running a magnet over the current 1p,2p and 5p coins.

"Like, you actually had to touch money *other* people had handled? Urrgghh!"

@@SportyMabamba well this one will severely diminish if not outright die given current events

Peter Tripp As long as my kids ain’t mix raced I’m gonna go to heaven

@Andy Moran. No, I meant they'll say "Like, whateverrr" in an anachronistic 80s Valley Girl accent.

Wrong paper and metal will never go away because... Drugs. Well maybe metal will but definitely not paper.

One thing to say in an otherwise flawless video: the old-style £2 coin (non-bimetallic) is from 1986, not 1989 - as it commemorates the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.

Mine too. 💋

The half crown was a wonderful, weighty coin to have in your hand.

I remember that! It still confuses me

Minus the angels and groats

Omg yeah wth u read my mind wth

Lmao that was so funny

I genuinely replayed that segment 5 or 6 times in a row and still couldn't understand it 😂

cgp grey is dat u?

reigninoel - It’s only a model.

Red Pilled Fox Even with the weird fractional denominations like €0.25, I doubt even the euro is silly enough to come out with thirds in a metric system. Can you imagine €0.33333333333333333333333333?

Wow! It's a while since I visited Jersey. I recall one time, after the Bank of England had withdrawn our £1 notes, getting change in a Jersey café that included an old Bank of England £1 note, a Scottish £1 note, a Jersey £1 note and a £1 coin. Happy days...

You need those for strip clubs

Nothing other than Bank of England notes are "legal tender", but they do have the equivalent value so whether they're accepted or not is completely dependent on their local banking provider (some will refuse "foreign" notes due to the unfamiliarity with counterfeit detection for them). Almost all chains will be working with a major national bank and so refusal is set at the individual store for the same reason of counterfeit detection. Independent businesses, especially out of city-centres may be relying on smaller banks which simply won't accept the notes (our banking provider won't even accept Scottish notes due to a high amount of counterfeits some years back and they couldn't tell the difference). However, in general Jersey, Irish, Scottish & English banknotes can be treated as having the same value - the same is not true of the Gibraltar Pound. Gibraltar is not party to the same currency union and so its currency (although pegged at the same value on the market), will incur transaction/conversion fees if you wish to use it in the UK.

They aren't as the channel islands and the Isle of Man are not part of the UK but are Crown Dependencies

The Jersey Pound is neither legal tender, nor "legal currency" (approved and regulated by the UK parliament) in the UK. While their value is pegged to the UK Pound and the currency union allows electronic transfers to treat them interchangeably, the coins and notes themselves are effectively no different from foreign currency in the UK. If a shop in the UK accepts it, it's no different from the odd few shops in the South East or around tourist hotspots that accept Euros.

Hear, hear.

But it’s not confusing?

@@youunculturedswine264 Pretty sure we made it sensible when we joined the EU. I hope Brexiters are not now going to start demanding pre-decimal currency! 🤣

@@clairee4939 Didn't think of it till you mentioned it...

@@Otacatapetl What have I done! 🤦🏻‍♀️🤣

These are actually the same pounds, you can thank Thatcher and other tory thieves after her for that...

Did you get a giant Toblerone?

@@googlesucks7840 For ½p I probably got a cola bottle or foam shrimp.

@@greenisnotacreativecolour I remember 4 x Fruit Salad for 1p. I think a jublee was 3p

nobody bothers to pick up pennies laying in the street now, don't know who does because they are virtually worthless

This is only so interesting as we didn't use decimal. All other currencies do and I think have since the start - they learnt from our idiocy. So a video on how a currency hasn't changed would not be all that interesting really....

@@adrianlbert6391 Australia was pre decimal and then decimal . And NZ. And probably most of the colonies.

sounds like the teacher who would find some excuse to touch the girl students

@@festusbojangles7027 your just a bit of a knob aren’t you

@@jackleatham2995 takes one to know one

They occasionally get mixed up with the new 10p coin as they're a similar size and same colour. When a shop gets handed a bunch of coins they're not looking closely enough to notice, same when they hand it to you by mistake in your change.

LMFAO

Same as the weight of £10's worth of tuppences apparently ;-)

I can imagine the nightmare of converting all those slot machines to handle the new decimal currency.

@@Tiqerboy Don't want to go through that again! The sad thing was that the pensioners could spend a whole morning going through £2 of old pennies but £2 of new ones took no time at all!

oof I’m watching rn at 2:56am-

5:46

We'll probably have to make that concession when we rejoin in 10-20 years.

@@sunmustbedestroyed The new (post) Covid-19 currency all over the world will be : toilet paper

The UK never joined the EU. It joined the EEC which mutated itself into the EU years later.

Neil Williams Ignoring that, the Euro didn't even exist when we "joined"

@@sunmustbedestroyed The EU won't exist in 20 years time. Just look at this current crisis. The facade of "unity" fell away instantaneously. All EU nations immediately turned nationalist, closing their borders, disobeying Brussels in order to look after their own people. Now, we even have Italians burning the EU flag and saying "we'll save ourselves" , after Brussels fined Italy and then sent €20million in aid to Iran. Brussels is finished.

#justamericanthings

@@DingDingTheRU-vidBuddy I like out colourful notes as opposed to your moss green bills. I also prefer our gold pound coins as opposed to the silver dollar. And the fact we don't have dead people on our coins. But anyway to each their own.

@@callumcowan7047 - when I was a boy in the 1960s we used to have dead people on our coins. We'd often find pennies and halfpennies in our pockets with Queen Victoria on them, and all the later monarchs (except Edward VIII).

rob yam dam Lol

@Redblade HE DID IT ON PURPOSE

Redblade oh the irony of your idiocy

Back in ye good ol’ days.

@Roger Dodger or sterling silver standard, in our case :p

I remember when 1p felt like a billionaire and that I could be Elon Musk in a week. Gud ol' dayz before da Smartphone gizmos

+Miss Akame Why has the word wholesome accelerated in usage in the past year and is used for things that are not wholesome? It just feels like people throw it around for anything they like and that doesn't have violence and sex.

@@callumcowan7047 because mr funny actor keanu reeves said it and now its everyones new favourite word

@@callumcowan7047 It hasn't. You just have an axe to grind with it and as such have noticed when people use it more often than you would have otherwise.