Doing away with copper coins

I do save mine in a large whiskey bottle (empty when I got it), either that or change goes into Air Ambulance Charity box in my local shop, amazing how much they collect.

2p coins are given to DGS if he's going to Amusement Arcade (rare treat)

I save 5p coins & take them to the Post Office when I have £5 worth.

Elrel the smallest British bird is a Goldcrest. The Farthing was minted until 1956 & ceased to be legal tender in 1960. I was born in the 50s & have memories of my Mum spending the coins & seeing references to prices using farthings. Fond memories of threepenny bits & "tanners" sixpence coins often found in Christmas Pudding

Charity money. Putting in lots of brown coins does contribute but is very difficult for the collectors to count and then have to take to the bank. Maybe change it to silver coins before donating.

I have heard of some banks charging to take coins!

For years I have thrown pennies and two penny coins into a jar. When it's full I take it to Tesco and put everything in their coin machine. I usually get a voucher for around £6 which can be taken off my shopping bill.

Fennel

Guide dogs charity keeps most of their tens of millions of pounds abroad in tax efficient countries. They are not a charity on their uppers, far from it.

I often save my coppers and when I go to one of the supermarkets where there are very few staffed checkouts and they direct you to the self service tills I enjoy getting out my bags of coppers and pay for the entire shop with them.

In two minds really, price increases will obviously be by 5 pence at the lowest, but at least we should stop hearing people say 1 pence! Pence is plural, 1 is a penny.

I very rarely have or use cash. My local monthly pub quiz nights are the only time I have to get cashback at Waitrose...usually a last minute thing.
I have a huge letter M (Metro bank) money box stuffed with silver and pound coins which I will deposit next time I can be bothered to go the 14 miles into town. With the exception of NatWest, all our local banks (and their ATMs) have closed. There is, of course, the Post Office which I'll have to use more.
No need for a purse, just a tiny leather folder holding a debit card and whatever store loyalty card(s) I need on any particular day.
It's all so much simpler. I pay bills by DD or window cleaner etc by instant payment which takes well under 2 hours to reach them.
I also use PayPal for many transactions.
Money is old hat now.

I actually spend my small change. Yes I will count out the right money for a small purchase. If I don't get rid of it I end up with a very heavy bag. I use my debit card for items over ten pounds. I can't understand why people don't just spend a penny

I agree, Gabriella - only ever use cash at the local market these days! & the odd little shop with a £5 minimum spend for cards. I actually use cashback credit card for everything & pay it off in full by direct debit.

As you get older, it's difficult to negotiate a purse when wielding a walking stick and a shopping bag, especially if you need to faff about putting glasses on to find the coins!

All my coins have specific destinations;
copper coins go into a charity tin and then to the local school for Children in Need Day;
5p in Smartie tubes (do they still sell them?) for a MS 'Dive' Machine;
10p, 20p in car for carpark machines
50p into kitchen money box for doorstep cash: window cleaner, parish magazine and charity collections, increasingly rare now.
£1 and £2 coins in my purse.
Hebdenali, you must save your copper coins for years to get enough to pay for your whole shop with them. I rarely save more than £5.00 in a year.

I'm concerned about the possible rounding up of all items that do not end in a 5 or 0, especially food. To begin with I expect it will make a noticeable difference to a weekly shop and just think of fuel prices increasing by 5p a litre instead of 1p. Also will people who get paid hourly have their hourly rates adjusted upwards, or downwards.

Just listened to Jeremy Vine on the subject and no one mentioned this side of the coin

I remember spending farthings on sweets( four of them to a penny) and like other posters loved the thruppeny bit, but above all I loved half a crown ( didn’t often get my sticky little hands on one though.)?

What is likely to happen if the small coins disappear is that you will still have prices ending on 79p or 99p. They go into the supermarket register at the price stated, which makes a slight difference if you buy a large number of the item. When you pay any price ending on a small amount there is not a coin for like 9p is rounded up, and anything under 5p is discounted, so instead of paying £ 4.99 you pay £5 and instead of paying £4.40 you pay £4. At least that's the way it works here. You still use all the numbers when calculating prices, interest etc.

I gather it's a case of what you loose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts.

As far as farthings go; they were legal tender until 1960, but even before that in Scotland they did not seem to be in circulation, as the smallest coin you got back in your change, or that a shopkeeper would accept was the half-penny. We did however battle with sums ending on 1, or 3 farthings in Junior School.

Thanks for the explanation grandtante, that makes more sense than my imaginings.

The children at church collect copper coins in a large sweet jar in aid of Tearfund. Last year they collected nearly £60.

Do you remember Victorian pennies? There were still a lot about when I was a child and I remember my sister telling me it was Queen Victoria. There was a cpecial collecting box for them in our Sunday School,

When my adult offspring all lived at home, plus my (now) son-in-law, we all put our coppers into a jar in the kitchen. When it was completely full, after about a year, it held enough for a Chinese takeaway for the whole family.

It's taking an awfully long time now only DD2 and I are here!

That is what happens in Australia too Grandtante although there never seems to be much rounding down, only rounding up.

How do petrol prices get calculated? If I buy 1 litre of fuel how can I pay 119.7p?

Mine all go into my 'Carnival Pig' and once per year, in October, they are shaken out, divided into nine piles (one for each grandchild!) and borne away by said grandchildren to our local carnivals, to be thrown at the collecting floats who support local charities. That said, in recent years I have had fewer and fewer copper coins to pop into the pig...shall have to start saving 5p coins instead I guess!

One of our adult sons would never carry small change in his pockets and left it lying around all over the house. I gathered it up into a large jar and then fed it into the supermarket cash machine each Christmas, then I gave it back to him in notes. He's left home now but I still separate the small coins and coppers and save them for the carol singers.

Didn't take them long to u-turn on this one, did it?

Talking of coins lying around, we used to have stacks of all sorts of foreign ones accumulated over the years, including pre Euro e.g. Austrian schillings, etc. Also a few out of date UK coins.
Dh recently found that a co. called Fourex.com has machines in various places inc. at a couple of big London railway stations, where you can feed them in (notes too inc. small ones the banks won't exchange) and get something back. They do tell you on the website the. rate for each of umpteen currencies.

Quite apart from making space in drawers and cupboards, Dh came back with over £90 from ours!
Recently did the same for a dd, who had sundry pots of coins lying about - £51 odd!

Yes Gabriella you can see cash becoming obsolete can't you? Who would ever have thought it possible?

I think I read somewhere that Finland never introduced the 1c and 2c coins when the Euro came in.

I am surprised that the copper coins are considered "worthless" in the UK. They are so big and bulky - the Euro cent coins seem like play money in comparison.

Whatever the currency, what happened to "look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves"?

(Sorry if someone's already said that - I have only skimmed over the thread)

kids at my secondary/6th Form school (where I taught) used to throw them away all over th school grounds. One year for Red Nose Day- we got some kids to pick them all up and put them into large sweet jars- and the system stuck and we made quite a bit of money for charity- they were placed by the Office/recption and the Canteen.