Pounds,pence,last stupid question.
 

Hi! Could someone please explain to me the money in London. I would like to have printed copies to give out to my traveling crew. I do know the exchange rate is not good. But I don't remember all the coins and what they are. I'm leaving Friday, so I need help quick. Thanks once more. Shanart

Pounds Sterling is a decimal system just like dollars i.e. 100 pence to the pound.

Notes come on £5, £10, £20 and £50 denominations (although you'll be unlikely to see £50 notes). They are easy to distinguish from each other because they are different colours and sizes.

Coins are as follows:
1p (small and copper coloured)
2p (big copper)
5p (smallest coin, silver coloured)
10p (big coin, silver)
20p (inbetween 5p and 10p in size, but an octagonal shape)
50p (like 20p but much bigger)
£1 (thick and gold coloured)
£2 (thick, big, gold with a silver centre).

All coins and notes are very easy to distinguish from each other (they're designed for blind people to be able to distinguish them)

PS this link to the Bank of England website will help you with picture of the notes:
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/design.htm

By the way, I know it's been said many times before, but my daughter is in England right now and has commented on how poor the exchange rate is making everything quite expensive. Nonetheless, she's having a great time.

you can see pictures of the current British coins here, http://www.royalmint.com/talk/specifications.asp

In order of increasing size and denomination (the two are directly related):

5GBP a small green/blue note

10GBP a slightly larger red/brown note

20GBP a larger blue/purple note

50GBP a large red note


As for the exchange rate, nothing you can do about it - however, it encourages UK tourism in America boosting your home economy so it's not all bad!

The 20p and 50p coins are not octagonal: they have seven sides, not eight.

The Eyewitness Guide to London has color pictures of all the coins and bills and details of the value of each.

Thanks for the quick reply ..

And how did/do crowns and schillings fit in? I've always been curious, but not enough to look it up.

Shillings (£0.05) and real pence (1 1/12 of a shilling)fitted in when the pound was worth $2.80. So think how lucky you are.

Crowns (5 shillings, or 5/- as we wrote it then) fitted in rather earlier, when the pound was worth even more.

If you're not careful we'll bring them back. If you think things are pricey now, wait and see what happens then.

Crowns and shillings were part of the old pre-decimal monetary system that was abandonned in the 1970's (I think). Some older people still use this terminology - which is tremendously confusing to tourists - and increasingly incomprehensible to others.

I have also heard people say "guinea" which is apparently a pound plus something else they no longer have - perhaps it works out to a pound plus 10pence?

A guinea was 21 shillings. It didn't exist as an actual unit of currency.

A guinea was 21 shillings, or a pound and a shilling. Quite how and why this was introduced I don't know, but eventually it came to be a sign of pricing luxury goods (and professional fees).

I don't think you'll find many people referring to the old currency - still less to all the old variant slang names for coins and values - a tanner, a bob, half a dollar (now that goes back to the days when there were $4 to the pound, so a half-crown was worth half a dollar). I don't even hear 'quid' or 'nicker' for a pound very often.

I remember Guineas. They were used when advertising expensive items like furniture because they sounded cheaper: 50 guineas, for example, was actually £52.50. They were also used by hotels and guest houses for quoting weekly rates because a guinea (21 shillings) was easily divisible by seven; ten guineas per week, for example, was 30 shillings (£1.50) per day.

Guineas are still used when associated with prizes for horse racing.

There are slang words for British money. I guess tuppence is 2p. What is a quid?

A quid is or was a pound. 'Tuppence' is the sound for pronouncing 'twopence' (likewise 'thruppence', for which the coin was called a 'thruppeny bit' - or 'thrippeny', and very very old silver ones were I think called a 'joey').

But nowadays, the convention is [number] + pence (or pee) - even (to my annoyance) 'one pence'. Such is inflation, 'spending a penny' no longer costs one pee, it's usually more like 20p.

I visited the UK for the first time in 1971, months after D(ecimal) day which was in April 1971.

It used to be 20 shillings made up a pound and 12 pennies made up a shilling. So something could cost 3 pounds 10 shilling 6 pence. Just think how much fun it used to be to get change from a £5 bank note (in this case 1 pound, 9 shillings 6 pence); almost as stupid as people who use such archaic units as yards, feet, inches (actually believe it or not as I understand it, this is the one place the Brits have been able to resist the EU rules on using metric measurements).

But as for the current, the 1p coin looks like a US penny, the 2p coin is the same bronze colour but much larger, the 5p coin looks like a US dime, the 10p coint looks like a US quarter, the 20p coin is not quite round, the 50p coin is a large silver coin which is not round, the £1 is a nice thick gold coin, and the £2 is a large fairly thick gold coin. The smallest paper money in the UK is £5.

My quick story is the first time I visited the UK in 1971, I took an Underground ride and the fare was 5p..(1 shilling). I gave the clerk a £1 bank note and got back 9 10p coins some of which were 2 shilling coins (the 10p coin was deliberately made the same size, thickness etc as 2 shillings) and a 1 shilling coin (which was the 5p coin). Putting all those coins in my pocket immediately taught me why the currency was called the pound...boy were those coins big. At that time, the 6 old pence coin (1/2 a shilling) was converted to 2 1/2 new pence (2.5p) and there was also a 1/2 p coin!

shanart: For your convenience you might want to go to the following site and print up some "cheat sheets" to give to your fellow travelers. It will be of great help in figuring conversion rates from dollars to pounds and vice versa:

http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic

We always stick one in our wallets when we travel and use it a lot.