Doing away with copper coins

Like wobbly I remember selling goods in Woolworths on a Saturday (my first job), for 19/11 1/2 d they'd done away with farthings by then. I'm pleased that they've decided to keep the copper coins.

Anyone else remember saving ship-ha'pennies to take to Sunday School? We put them in a large papier-mâché model of a ship. I think they went to help missionaries overseas.

I can remember shops (especially drapers) pricing as 19s 11 3/4d

Ending in 99p is called 'hoodwinking logic'. For some reason, £9.99 seems a lot cheaper than £10.

At least you get the change due to you as per price advertised. Here in Euroland (Ireland) the one cent coin has been abolished but lots of prices end in 99c and of course there is not a cent to give us. Now the law was to mark up or down but I have yet to come across any goods with price ending with one cent.

On the face of it, it seems OK. But is it a small step towards getting rid of all coins and, ultimately, getting rid of cash altogether? There is certainly more and more talk of a "cashless society". I'm not sure whether that would be a good thing or not. How would it affect society?

A Stephen Hawking quote about god and black holes said that god plays dice and sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.
Made me think of 5p coins, Jalima.

If they do away with the one and two pence coins the first thing that will happen is that prices will rise. Think back to the halfpenny ("only small, bit of a nuisance") so everything got rounded up to the next 1p. Now things will be rounded up by 2p and 1p - together that's 9d. Next it will be that the 5p is too small so everything will rise by 1/-. Not a lot? Cost of living rising by stealth. So that's the Treasury sorted then.

I have a plant stall outside my front gate to raise money for the local hospice. Several friends bring me fruit, vegetables, flowers, plants and books to sell. So many people just want to support the Hospice in a small way and last year we raised over £1600.
At the moment I am selling bags of snowdrop bulbs in the green - as I have thousands of them - and I have made over £30 already.
As you can imagine I have loads of change to exchange into notes. The local shops gladly take £1 and 50 pence coins but the rest I just bag up and go to the nearest large town and change several bags at once a couple of times a year. Last week a customer left us an IOU for 25 pence - we did laugh but he did come back and pay it.

It would seem that many of us put them into various boxes because we can't be bothered with them. I suspect they cost more to make than they are worth. I have recently been converted to contactless payment, hardly ever use cash, only at the pub.

The 5p coin is annoying though.

They changed their minds within 24 hours, probably because Hammond couldn't take the laughter any more.

and the thing is, prices are never rounded down - always up.

Oh good!

Well, the jars go to charity when they are full, if they are full you can't keep adding more

They have changed their minds. They are keeping them.
You can still keep your jars full - or give them to charity.

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.

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)

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

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!

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

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.

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!

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?

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!

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,