August 21, 2009

Metal Money

Has anyone else noticed how strange our coins are now looking. It was not until after our summer holiday when I was separating out the foreign and UK coions that I realised I couldn’t tell the difference any more! Maybe this is just a side effect of getting older – but I don’t think so.

There is something vaguely embarrassing about being a brit abroad and peering uncertainly at the currency, before giving up and holding out a handful of cash to the shop assistant. The trouble is – I am beginning to think I need to do that now here too.

Coins are getting smaller – and my eyesight is getting worse at more or less the same rate. Eventually there comes a time (around about now I think) where you cannot see the words on the tiny little bits of metal – and you do not know them well enough to be sure which is which.

In previous years you could spot a foreign coin in your change a mile off. Now I barely even recognise our own. I bet there are millions like me in the same boat – and we all have the 20p coin to blame.

Remember a few weeks back when the nation was agog at the apparent high value of the thousands of date-less 20p’s in circulation. Like many others I peered hopefully at the change scattered around the house. And like many others I couldn’t even begin to read the words and figures on the tiny coins.

Time was when our money was something to be proud of. Pennies were huge and a very different colour to 3d bit which in turn were very different to 6d pieces… above that shillings, florins and half crowns were coins of substance. The designs may have changed minutely… but all that really changed since Queen Victoria’s time was the monarch’s head.

Now our coinage seems to change size and shape almost on a whim. As with most things in life – money is certainly not what it used to be!

Metal Money

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