Foreign currencies

wouter · Post by **wouter** » Thu May 01, 2003 12:22 pm

K3lvin wrote: I wonder if UK ever joins to the eurozone, will there be Scottish, English, Northern Irish and Welsh eurocoins?

That is an very interesting question! I wouldn't be suprised if they did.

Donald · Post by **Donald** » Thu May 01, 2003 2:42 pm

They probably will have their king or queen on the national faces. By that time it could be King William V.

micro · Post by **micro** » Fri May 02, 2003 9:12 pm

K3lvin wrote:I wonder if UK ever joins to the eurozone, will there be Scottish, English, Northern Irish and Welsh eurocoins?

I hope so

Dakkus · Post by **Dakkus** » Thu Sep 29, 2005 9:00 am

K3lvin wrote:EDIT: I read some info on Scottish notes from http://www.scotbanks.org.uk/ and according to it all Scottish banks issuing notes have diffirent looking notes! So for example they have at least 3 diffirent looking £20 notes:

How on earth they cope with this?!

The cashboxes in the shops must look interesting, because they've got four different style banknotes in the same pile. Apparently you can randomly get a note of any bank as a change.

Oh, and the fourth one is this:

lazza · Post by **lazza** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 2:18 pm

It's not so confusing for most people in the UK, but if you get far enough south, then many people will not have seen Scottish notes, and sometimes refuse to accept them. (Here in Newcastle, I see Scottish "fivers" or "tenners" maybe once a month).

A few interesting "facts":
- Scotland still uses £1 notes, even though they have not been legal tender in England for 20 years. I think that only RBS issues £1 notes...?
- Scottish banks also issue £100 notes (I have only ever seen one Scottish £100 note in my life). I believe that they are legal tender in England and Wales, or are at least accepted by banks.
- Other places that use GB£ also often have their own notes (Northern Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar, Isle-of-Man). All these places can use Bank of England GB£, but often the reverse is not true (i.e. you cannot use these "foreign" notes in England and Wales, but possibly can in Scotland!).
- In addition, most places also issue their own coins (much like Euros), which are also not strictly always legal tender in England, but often get used (especially the small value coins such as 1p and 2p, which you rarely examine).

Confused, yet?

As if this is not enough, the notes have changed styles quite a lot in the last 10 years, with new designs and smaller notes. And the Bank of England also issues £1 coins with many different designs representing different countries (a rose for England, thistle for Scotland, etc.), plus many commemorative £1 and £2 coins (and sometimes even £5 coins, but these rarely get used in shops).

But at least all this is now in decimal.... Just think how confusing it was before 1972 when there were 20 shillings to the pound and 12 pennies to the shilling, and people dealt in half crowns (two and a half shillings), florins (two shillings), farthings (1/4 of a penny) and sixpence and threpenny bits (1/2 and 1/4 of a shilling).

(I love the following picture of 12 old 1 penny coins next to a new 5p piece, which effectively have the same value!!)

Fortunately, all this changed a few weeks before I was born (in fact, as the son of a bank manager, the timing of my birth was quite awkward

) when the UK went decimal. But we continued to use 1 shilling and 2 shilling coins as 5p and 10p until the 1980s.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 3:56 pm

And in answer to the original thread.....

I always try to keep some coins from my travels. So I have many pre-Euro coins, and coins and/or notes from China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, and East Africa, as well as a lot of old British coins and notes, and a few other coins my grandfather got when he worked in a shop in Manchester.

I am not a true collector, as I never buy or swap any coins, but I keep these as more of a souvenir.

lazza · Post by **lazza** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 4:15 pm

Anonymous wrote:And in answer to the original thread.....

I always try to keep some coins from my travels. So I have many pre-Euro coins, and coins and/or notes from China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, and East Africa, as well as a lot of old British coins and notes, and a few other coins my grandfather got when he worked in a shop in Manchester.

I am not a true collector, as I never buy or swap any coins, but I keep these as more of a souvenir.

Oops, that was me. I seemed to get logged out between messages.

Fjon · Post by **Fjon** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 4:28 pm

One interesting thing which occured before the Euro:

Having the UK (especially Northern Ireland) as our nearest neighbour meant we often saw British coins in Ireland. The IR£ and GB£ were in no way interchangeable - they were separate currencies which shared the same name. However, 1p, 2p, 5p and 10p coins were similar for both countries. It got to the stage that, even though not legal tender, a lot of British coins got mixed up with the Irish ones. It became quite common to find British 1p and 2p in your change, and sometimes 5p and 10p. While a bank would not accept these coins, they were passed around through normal circulation a lot.

Dakkus · Post by **Dakkus** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 5:29 pm

Fjon wrote:One interesting thing which occured before the Euro:

Having the UK (especially Northern Ireland) as our nearest neighbour meant we often saw British coins in Ireland. The IR£ and GB£ were in no way interchangeable - they were separate currencies which shared the same name. However, 1p, 2p, 5p and 10p coins were similar for both countries. It got to the stage that, even though not legal tender, a lot of British coins got mixed up with the Irish ones. It became quite common to find British 1p and 2p in your change, and sometimes 5p and 10p. While a bank would not accept these coins, they were passed around through normal circulation a lot.

Well, since one Irish penny has lower value than one British penny, it was only good to get them ;)

But, yes it really is quite funny you mixed those coins. It would be the same as if we had Estonian or Swedish coins in circulation here in Finland. Or if the Swiss used euro cents as their currency.

How often does it actually happen that the same coin has different value in different areas. At least with the british pennies it apparently has been like that, because 1IEP was only 0,89GBP :)

Fjon · Post by **Fjon** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 6:24 pm

Dakkus wrote:
Well, since one Irish penny has lower value than one British penny, it was only good to get them

:Sigh: It wasn't always that way. In the 80s IR£ was worth more than GB£, and gradually the currency fell and fell. There was a period were they were worth more or less the same, and ever since then GBP was readily accepted in most shops.

yli · Post by **yli** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 7:09 pm

Well, to stay on-topic....I got around 2000 coins and banknotes from lot's of countries at home. I think I collect them now around 20-25 years. I can't really remeber, because I started when I was very young. The nicest coins are of countries I have visited myself of course

GrazianoD · Post by **GrazianoD** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 7:57 pm

I collect coins and banknotes too... I started collecting them when I was really a child... I like notes with many colours and pictures...
For me the nicest are the old Italian Lira....

yli · Post by **yli** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 9:29 pm

GrazianoD wrote:I collect coins and banknotes too... I started collecting them when I was really a child... I like notes with many colours and pictures...
For me the nicest are the old Italian Lira....

I think Macedonia has one of the nicest banknotes now a days - although the colours are less bright that our old gulden banknotes