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A Penny For Your Thoughts: Strange Change

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brownmane said:
How ancient ahem, old are you guys? When I was young, some of the kids I went to school with (70s decade) lived in a village with a grocery store. Before getting picked up by bus, they would buy a bag of candies, some of which cost 2 for a penny or for a nickel. When I went in town to help my mom do her grocery shopping, I would get a quarter and be able to buy a small bag of chips (I think they are crisps in your language:)) and a pop.

A quarter of a penny would not have gotten us anything. Not to mention that our smallest denomination was the penny.
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Some of us are ancient. The farthing was pre-decimal in the 60s when there were 240 pennies to the pound. Farthings were pretty rare even then but you could get the occasional few as change.

We’re talking about two different currencies - Canadian pennies were not the same as British ones so we’d have to work out how much a UK one was worth compared with a Canadian one in the 60s or 70s to see who was getting the best deal.

If Enola were still around I reckon he’d come up with the answer but in his absence..

I remember Blackjacks - a small chewy rectangle of liquorice flavour - for a farthing, also ‘Fruit Salad’ - a similar size chewy rectangle of supposedly fruity flavour. You’d have to be pretty hard-up to buy one though. More likely to get a bag of them for 3 pence.

Both terrible for your teeth.
 
Farthings were still fairly common when I was little I loved the little wren :) I'm 74 so my childhood was in the fifties. I remember the fruit salads and the black jacks for a farthing each I prefered the former. I've still got some somewhere, the farthings that is not the sweeties!! :)
 
I was born around the time of decimalisation and thus grew up as a wholly decimal kid apart from miles and yards on road signs :)

However, I do remember the decimal half-pennies which were teeny tiny little coins.

I swear that non-decimal one shilling pieces and florins were carried over to decimalisation for about a decade or so and were used as 5p and 10p coins until the newer mintings gradually took over. I remember coins given in change or in my moneybox with the Queen's dad's noggin on them and my mum explaining what shillings, florins, half-crowns were.

No-one else of my age group or older can remember this, not even my said dear mama - am I right? Please tell me I am right!

I do remember 5p, 10p were larger and heavier than now, and so were the 50p coins.
I can remember the advent of the 20p piece and the original £1 coin.

As to my village shop sweets (candy) recollections, one could get 3 chocolate footballs for 1p. Panini stickers were 10p and Spacedust was IIRC 4 or 5p.
 
AnonyJ said:
I swear that non-decimal one shilling pieces and florins were carried over to decimalisation for about a decade or so and were used as 5p and 10p coins until the newer mintings gradually took over.
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Yes they certainly were! I called the florins 'two bob bits' even after they'd all become 10ps lol.
 
I found one of my old primary school maths books recently and this was the first page, showing the coins in usage at the time. It's something of an unintentional period piece.
I have a, possibly false, memory of when the sixpence stopped being legal tender in 1980 and either my dad or older brother showing me one and trying to explain what it meant but I don't think I understood. I do remember when the 20 pence piece first came into being and someone at school passing one round for everyone to see. The same thing happened with the pound coin.
 

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AnonyJ said:
I was born around the time of decimalisation and thus grew up as a wholly decimal kid apart from miles and yards on road signs :)

However, I do remember the decimal half-pennies which were teeny tiny little coins.

I swear that non-decimal one shilling pieces and florins were carried over to decimalisation for about a decade or so and were used as 5p and 10p coins until the newer mintings gradually took over. I remember coins given in change or in my moneybox with the Queen's dad's noggin on them and my mum explaining what shillings, florins, half-crowns were.

No-one else of my age group or older can remember this, not even my said dear mama - am I right? Please tell me I am right!

I do remember 5p, 10p were larger and heavier than now, and so were the 50p coins.
I can remember the advent of the 20p piece and the original £1 coin.

As to my village shop sweets (candy) recollections, one could get 3 chocolate footballs for 1p. Panini stickers were 10p and Spacedust was IIRC 4 or 5p.
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You are right, I remember it well!
 
AnonyJ said:
I swear that non-decimal one shilling pieces and florins were carried over to decimalisation for about a decade or so and were used as 5p and 10p coins until the newer mintings gradually took over. I remember coins given in change or in my moneybox with the Queen's dad's noggin on them and my mum explaining what shillings, florins, half-crowns were.

No-one else of my age group or older can remember this, not even my said dear mama - am I right? Please tell me I am right!
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Yes, used for many years after, simultaneously with the new 5 and 10 pence (which were the same sizes as the shillings).
In use until 1990 and 1992 respectively;
 

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AnonyJ said:
I was born around the time of decimalisation and thus grew up as a wholly decimal kid apart from miles and yards on road signs :)

However, I do remember the decimal half-pennies which were teeny tiny little coins.

I swear that non-decimal one shilling pieces and florins were carried over to decimalisation for about a decade or so and were used as 5p and 10p coins until the newer mintings gradually took over. I remember coins given in change or in my moneybox with the Queen's dad's noggin on them and my mum explaining what shillings, florins, half-crowns were.

No-one else of my age group or older can remember this, not even my said dear mama - am I right? Please tell me I am right!

I do remember 5p, 10p were larger and heavier than now, and so were the 50p coins.
I can remember the advent of the 20p piece and the original £1 coin.

As to my village shop sweets (candy) recollections, one could get 3 chocolate footballs for 1p. Panini stickers were 10p and Spacedust was IIRC 4 or 5p.
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Ms Me was born at the time of decimalisation. I occasionally wind her up by speculating that something is only worth thruppence threefarthings. Met with roll of eyes.
 
Floyd1 said:
Gordon remembers when currency was like this;
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There used to be a fabulous advert on TV (I think for a bank), where the final line was 'got change for a guinea pig?' Used to make me laugh like a drain.
 
hunck said:
We’re talking about two different currencies - Canadian pennies were not the same as British ones so we’d have to work out how much a UK one was worth compared with a Canadian one in the 60s or 70s to see who was getting the best deal.
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One pence was equivalent to 2.5061 Canadian cents in 1970.
 
AnonyJ said:
am I right? Please tell me I am right!
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Not only are you right you are also correct.

I also remember that the old sixpence piece was still used for a while as it was worth two and a half pence. Initially there seemed to be a lot of prices that were '... and a half p'

People would also use the whole phrase when talking about prices eg 'It cost seven an' a half new p'
 
pandacracker said:
Not only are you right you are also correct.

I also remember that the old sixpence piece was still used for a while as it was worth two and a half pence. Initially there seemed to be a lot of prices that were '... and a half p'

People would also use the whole phrase when talking about prices eg 'It cost seven an' a half new p'
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I didn't realise that the sixpence also continued in circulation until 1980.
I remember seeing some in a box at home though, along with a few old threepence pieces.
 
AnonyJ said:
I do remember 5p, 10p were larger and heavier than now, and so were the 50p coins.
I can remember the advent of the 20p piece and the original £1 coin.
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Yes, shillings and florins (aka "two bob") could be spent in shops until the 5p and 10p, respectively, were shrunk. Until then, 5p and a "bob" were the same size and weight.

Oddly, the first 50p coins (ie the large ones) came out in 1969, 2 years before decimalisation. Until then, there had been no equivalent coin, just the "ten bob" note.

20p coins arrived in 1982, and pound coins a year later. I've got a reasonable collection (about 40 varieties) of round pound coins - ironically, I find the new shiny pound coins a bit dull.

Talking of dull, does anyone else remember that a lot of the early 20p coins turned a horrible yellow colour really quickly? Don't know if they were rapidly withdrawn, as I never see a yellow 20p nowadays.
 
Stormkhan said:
brass joeys
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Sounds like a euphemism for something.

brownmane said:
Before getting picked up by bus, they would buy a bag of candies, some of which cost 2 for a penny or for a nickel.
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Mythopoeika said:
Back in the 60s, we had things called a 'penny chew', which actually cost a penny
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There were still penny candies in the U.S., I remember, in the 60s, but they were usually prepackaged in bags of 50 or 100 or so and/or sold by weight. Not many places sold them individually.

pandacracker said:
Not only are you right you are also correct.
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No politics.
 
Oh, and i just remembered that when Wyborowa vodka was being heavily marketed in America, some bottles came with a one-grosz coin (one- one hundredth of a złoty) on a tag attached. At the exchange rates of the time it would have been worth 1/33 of a cent; on the booming currency black market, no more than about 1/100 of a cent.

EDIT: The złoty was revalued in the 1990s. If that coin is still accepted as money, it's worth one millionth of the present złoty. (The present złoty is .25 dollars, .2 pounds, or .23 euros.) Collector value may be higher.
 
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maximus otter said:
Aaargh! “Pence” is a plural; you mean “one penny.”

Not the first time that this has been perpetrated in this thread; had to get it off my chest.

maximus otter
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I have one pence, one pence, one pence, one pence, one pence, one pence......

Sorry, I couldn't resist that.
 
A sixpence (plural in a singular word) is worth six pennies (plural).
Sixpenny - as in "I'll have a sixpenny chew" - is a pronoun?
 
brownmane said:
You Brits and your language. We Canadians have only ever used the words penny and pennies. @maximus otter you will never have to worry about the misuse of pence. Just move to Canada:bthumbup:
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I think that if you asked me what coins I was holding, it would be correct to say that I have two pennies in my hand. If you asked how much money there was, I'd say two pence.

That's the distinction in UK English, I think. Pennies for the coins, pence for what they represent.

But never, ever, one pence!
 
Of course, American coins are more stupid. We have a coin called a penny (plural pennies) but its value is one cent. And there is a coin worth ten cents, but the stated denomination is "one dime".
 
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