It wouldn't be a bob, a tanner and a joey. Actually, it would be "1 and 9", "1 shilling and 9 pence" or "1 shilling and 9", depending on how they'd want to say it.
My personal favourite example of this is in the very first episode of Doctor Who. Even before the change had been officially announced in the real world, the Doctor's granddaughter revealed herself as a time traveller when she forgot that the pound hadn't yet been decimalized in 1963. It's certainly aged better than some of their other predictions for the future.
It's not that people felt the new decimal system was "too difficult to learn," it's just that most people had to spend the first year calculating the new prices into the old money, to decide whether shop keepers were cheating them or giving them a good deal. Even now, 40 years on, it's a trope of casual conversation among those of a certain generation to say, about almost anything measurable, from speed limits to the length of dress fabric--"What's that in old money?"
reminds me of when the Netherlands changed from Gulden to Euros, there was an official set conversion rate and people very much converted the prices to see if they were getting a good or bad deal; even to this day, some older people (and some younger people who adhere to very conservative opinions) still convert Euro prices back to Gulden and then go on a rant about how the Euro has made things more expensive, being either clueless or wilfully ignorant to inflation that would've equally happened if we hadn't made the switch
@N Fels my grandparents (CDA voters), I've also seen people online who support PVV, FvD, and/or JA21 who do it (and that's where you'll find the younger people who do it as well) I can see that sort of stuff coming from SP as well, they're the most conservative party on the left, they're populists, and there's a reason voters sometimes go between SP and PVV (not sure if it's also the case with FvD and JA21 going to/from SP)
Worth pointing out that the "crown" coin was EXTREMELY rare. To the extent that my grandmother told me it didn't exist. This means that there was a very common "half-crown" coin, representing the handy value of 2.5 shillings but no "crown" coin. Bonkers.
In the mid 60s school dinner money was 5 shillings, which was paid using two half crown coins. The crown coin was indeed rare and can't remember it ever being used in practice, but was minted as a collectors coin for commemorative purposes.
This reminds me of a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch which had the 'old system' as part of the dialog while the phrase "Sketch Written Before Decimalisation" appeared on the screen.
(New Brain from Currys was the sketch. I looked it up because I was curious. Only video online is pretty shoddy, so hard to make it out, but the text is present.)
The Beatles "Taxman" should have the same disclaimer. "There's one for you, nineteen for me, 'Cause I'm the taxman." Wilson's Labour government had the Beatles paying a 95% supertax.
5:46 The £sd system isn’t from the medieval times! It’s actually from much longer ago, being based upon the roman Libra-Solidus-Dinarius system, which is why the abbreviation for pence is a d.
It's also why the / symbol is called a "solidus" and was commonly used to represent shillings. Fun fact, the official Unicode name of the \ symbol is the "reverse solidus."
No it *is* from early medieval times. More specifically the late 8th century early 9th century. The Roman system of coinage was quite different. They didn't have a 'libra' coin, it was a weight not a currency and the relative values of the coinages such as solidus or denarius were varied over the course of the roman empire. The As was also the most common coin in circulation and sestertii were used more for large value transaction. The l.s.d came from the Emperor Charlamagne and his father Peppin who rationalised a the chaotic world of post-Roman coinages inside the Frankish empire that were awash with often debased coinages from the old empire, Byzantium and local mints often with names referencing Roman coins that no longer had value. He forced the overhaul coinage system of the Carolingian empire to match the l.s.d system. The Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia under Offa adopted Carlemagne's system to faciliate trade which effectively replaced old Anglo-Saxon coins over time. The names are only in Latin because Latin names for coins were still common after the Roman empire collapsed. Also, the idea that this was used for centuries is not exactly true either. For most of the history of the system the libra and solidus were mainly a values used for grouping large values for bookkeeping purposes, units of account - just as the guinea always was up until decimalisation. The penny was the common coin used in everyday transactions and most people didn't have to worry about other coins. Only from about the time of Henry VII did coins like shillings (originally called testoons), crowns and gold soveriegns (worth 1 pound) actually started to be used, and primarily only by merchants, not everyday people in normal life. These values weren't even the only unit of account that existed, there were others such as the Mark which was a set weight of gold - in Germany this unit of account became the basis for latter coinages but not in England. Indeed, when you realise that people grouped the values of large number of pennies (and then shillings) in pounds, this was the value of a fictional pound of gold that I they were comparing it against. And that is why there is a weight value called pound and a currency.
Fun fact: You know how the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland usually wears a hat with a card on it that reads "10/6"? You probably thought that was a weird size measurement, but it's actually the price tag! That hat costs 10 shilling 6 pence, therefore half a Guinea. He's such an idiot, he wears a hat with the price tag still on it!
Actually, the price was never originally mentioned in the story. The price was put there by the illustrator, and used by Charles when he adapted the story for younger readers.
I didn't calculate the coins, but I did do the sum in my head, and not in the right to left pen-and-paper method he used. £3+£5=£8, 16s+15s>£1 so 8 becomes £9. Then 15s is 5s less than a pound, so you subtract 5 from 16 to get 11s. 11+10 > 12, so 11s becomes 12s, and either 10-1 or 11-2 both leave 9d.
I grew up with this and remember it well. I was born in 1953 and was 18 when the system changed ( prelude to joining the common market). The crown wasn't commonly used then. It tended to be a commemorative coin, given as a present for children to put in their money boxes.
Was going to way the same thing. What we did have though were 10 shilling notes. BTW the way the amounts were written down on prices is not as shown here. It was not (say) £3 3s 11d but £3 3/11. If the amount was smallish (say less than £5) prices were often given in shillings and pence - say 59/11. Oh and we never said "pence" it was always "punce" - short "uh" sound. I have no memory of farthings - I think they went before the 60s when I was born.
As an elderly Englishman who was brought up in the days of predecimal currency, I would like to make a few comments, if I may, some of which have already been touched on by other viewers. 1. Firstly, I think the "difficulty" of the pre- decimal British currency is exaggerated. It was certainly no harder than other parts of the Imperial system (that is still in use in the USA. If one was brought up with it, it was easy. Even as small children not yet at school, we would know what "half a crown" was, and know exactly how far our sixpence a week pocket money would stretch. On the other hand, we were well into primary school before we would know how many acres there were in a square mile, and probably in secondary school before we learned how much a nautical mile, or a barrel of oil was, or that American gallons, barrels or (short) "tons" were different to our own. Of course, in those days we had no personal computers, pocket calculators or mobile telephones, we learnt multiplication tables at school, and we had mothers at home to teach us useful things, so maybe we were a bit more adept at mental arithmetic that the current generation of kids. 2. While the difficulties of the old system are emphasised, the advantages are often overlooked. The biggest advantage of the British predecimal system was divisibility. Unlike the Decimal system, which is only divisible by multiples of 2 or 5, the pound, being comprised of 240 pence, could be divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 or 10 While still coming out with a whole number of pence. Try dividing a dollar between three people so that each one gets an equal share. 3. Personally, I have never heard of a halfpennyworth being pronounced "haipth", and I went to several countries during the time they were using predecimal currency.. The usual abbreviations were "heypney's worth" or "ha'p'orth" (As in the well known proverb "Don't spoil a ship for a ha'p'orth of tar", meaning don't spoil a job by false economies or skimping on materials) Of course, English is famous for its many dialects, so I can't rule out the possibility that "Haipths" may have been used somewhere. Yorkshire, perhaps? 4 You were somewhat dismissive of the Guinea, relating how in recent times it has come to represent 21 shillings, leading shops to quote prices in guineas rather than pounds in order to gain an extra 5%. That is true enough since the Guinea was demonetized in the early 19th Century. But that was at the end of its long and illustrious history. In the early modern period, the Guinea, so named because it was originally minted from West African gold, was England's (later Great Britain's) original gold coin, preceding the gold Sovereign by about two centuries, and, with the growth of British trade, it became a very prestigious coin. Also, since, the value of the pound was based on a set amount in British (silver) currency, but the Guinea was minted from one ounce of pure gold. in its heyday, the value of the Guinea would fluctuate against the Pound, depending on the relative values of gold and silver. That facilitated trade by allowing British merchants to trade in either silver-based Pounds or golden Guineas. At the time the Guinea was demonetized, the value of the Guinea was somewhere near 21 shillings, so the amount of 21 shillings became popularly known as "a guinea". However, actual gold Guineas (which are still minted to this day) are now considered as "bullion coins" and collectors items (like the modern day South African "Krugerrand") and if you wanted to buy one it would cost you a hell of a lot more than 21 shillings. (another comment coming)
Yeah, l remember my grandfather complained about it constantly. He called decimalization the "yanking" of the British Economy. He knew the old system very well and was extremely reluctant to change . Of course ,he also disliked central heating amongst many other things.
I'm sure the Americans would be fine, they keep trying to convince us that 12 land leagues, 24 rods and 73 barleycorns is a perfectly understandable measurement of distance.
This is something that I find so amusing, the American seem to pride themselves on not using the metric system (decimal) since it's "not any more convenient" ........ whilst their ancestors made the first decimal currency explicitly because it's simpler to use (also, the reason the US didn't adopt the Metric System at the dawn of the XIXth century is the biggest plothole I have ever seen. What ? It would make you seem "too french" ? What does that even mean and why would the guys that wanted to distance themselves from the British would pass on this opportunity to stick it to Britain and reassure their distinct identity? Whoever wrote that should be fired, it's way too unbelievable)
@@sephikong8323 Better than the UK, where they use fricken metric and imperial system side by side. "Oh, yeh mate, just go down about three miles, turn right and a coupl'a hundred metres later an' bob's your uncle!"
@@sephikong8323 We honestly aren't that zealous about the imperial system, and we use the metric system in day to day life for a bunch of things alongside the imperial system. But no one is too enthusiastic about devoting the necessary resources and education to make the switch, and there isn't much pressure to do so since we're doing fine as it is.
@@jeremiahblake3949 I am mostly talking about the innumerable keyboard warriors that prop up in literally every video that talk about the Metric system (even sometimes randomly when the Metric system is used for measurement as well) to say that the Imperial system is just "objectively better and more intuitive" and defend it like their lives are on the line. I know that most people don't really care, but there's a legitimate portion of the American people that use the Imperial system as a form of pride and defend it as if it's Patriotic to do so
Canada went to a decimal system before it was even a country. In 1851 it was decided to switch to a decimal system and using the term dollar and cents to make commerce with the United States easier. Although Pounds Sterling were legal tender throughout the colonies, the transition to the decimal dollar system was in full use by Confederation in 1867.
other then usa and uk world normally isnt like donkey stoborn and silly . like imperial system usa syill resist fee5t inc yaerrd bla blza ounce paund garabge systems so im not so sure about canada i think becouse of so close to usa its moslty metric some still partly binded with usa wgı jknow maybe usa resist this long becouse of 100 cent do 1 dollar when gain indepeted they stick with imperial system but on money changed
@@kazikokaziko4903 Canada is officially metric. Been that way since the 1970s, but because of the proximity of the U.S., remnants of the imperial system remain. For instance, people often still give their height in feet and inches , and weight in pounds, even though official documents (like a driver’s license) are given in metric. A lot of the trades like carpentry and home renovations still use imperial, even though metric would be obviously easier. Plus there are some really strange things like ovens calibrated in Fahrenheit, even though temperatures haven’t be broadcasted in Fahrenheit since the around early 1980s. People under 40 years old, generally will not understand imperial measures where imperial has disappeared (like road distances, speeds, and weather temperatures). It’s an interesting mix, and I think most Canadians don’t really think of it. But it does look a bit funny when compared to to a typical European or Asian country.
@@lukek1949 "People under 40 years old, generally will not understand imperial measures..." Generally, yes, but they are quite handy with them if they work in hardware and fabric stores, etc.
@@lukek1949 Metric/Imperial can cause trouble if you're not careful. First time in the US I picked up a rental car and while driving on the freeway got the car to 100 and wondering why people were driving so slow. 100mph is a "bit" faster than 100kph
I worked in a pub in the sixties and was able to add up the most complicated and long orders in my head. I vaguely remember someone coming in to work on a Monday showing us his decimal coins, but then I emigrated. We still had coins dating from the Victorian era, I still have a penny where you can just read "1859".
Yeah like I want to drag the system but honestly as someone who's worked in meat markets enough to be able to convert pounds, ounces, and grams in my head with ease, I get how it's possible for people to be used to this system
I've got a Swiss half Franc dated from 1881, which I got as change in a bakery around ten years back. That was quite a surprise. Meanwhile the oldest Euro coins are dated 1998, though that by itself is quite interesting, as that's two years before they even became a legal tender.
As an American boy, i learned the pound/shilling/pence system from the Annotated Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, which explained all the British slang & archaisms in the wide margins. I wish i still had it.
My god, I wish I was more well read, that is an awesome anecdote to drop. Also as an american boy, I am still staunchly against base-10 and metric, mostly for the same reasons the French complained about it back in the 1700's. For day to day human life, it is an awful way to do weights and measures, a base 12 system has more factors and would serve a far better purpose.
@@zephyr6927 if you aren't dealing with the astro or the nano on a day to day basis metric doesn't make any sense. I already said before based on factors alone imperial is a far quicker way when encountering day to day life. Fractionation of numbers is easy but I realize I'm saying that as an American.
@6:36 -- The 20p coin was not introduced until 1982, nine years after decimalisation. You still see these, such as the coin in the shot, because they minted so many. In 1968, sets of replacement equivalent coins were minted. This is why the new 5p and new 10p maintained the sizes and weights of the shilling and two-bob they respectively replaced.
3:00 There *was* a coin called guinea worth 21 shillings between 1717 and 1816. (The coin also existed before 1717 but that's the year its value was legally fixed at 21 shillings).
@@parvchetri0995 Yes, but back then the value wasn't fixed at 21 shillings because pounds were made of silver whereas guinea was made of gold and the relative price of those metals affected the relative value of these coins.
@@seneca983 I see, I heard the story of Charles II fighting the London fire alongside fire fighters and he then rewarded the firefighters 100 guineas or so.
I was an American child living in London in 1971 when the change happened but I learned the old system first. Apparently it's still lurking in the back of my mind because I was at a pub in Sheffield about 10 years ago that was having a problem with their cash tills and the waitress was trying to figure my lunch bill without one. I looked at her and said "oh-you owe me 7 pounds 6 shillings change from a £20 note. She looked at me very oddly and I realized that she wouldn't have even been born in 1971-let alone dealt with £/s/d!
I had a similar experience going back to the UK in 2019 after living in the US for 30 years. For some reason my brain could only remember the old pennies (even though I'd lived in England for 13 years with the new money), so I was confused when a cashier handed me some new pennies. I seriously thought they were ha'pennies. When I said so, she looked at me as if I was insane. She was maybe 25 years old.
I think, it was an "eastern egg", because Ukrainian and Russian currencies names have the exact same origin. In medieval Rus "hrivna" was a piece of silver that was cut to smaller pieces which were called "Ruble". Plus Russia was the very first country in the world which decimalaised its national currency
Decimalisation ushered in a period of inflation which peaked a few years later. The reason was because 240 old pence now equalled 100 new pence, and prices were normally rounded up after decimalisation. We were left with a lot of prices like 2.5p and the tendency was to round them up to 3p, an increase in price of 20%. What you have to remember is that prices were far, far lower then so this rounding up really increased the cost of living of basic items and therefore inflation.
The people were definitely robbed. The government turn a shilling worth 12p into 5p decimal. You could get a dozen eggs for a shilling, but I doubt you get a dozen for 5p decimal.
I'm sure the rounding had an effect, however I doubt that was the only reason In Australia when they decimalised, all of the coins went from silver and gold to more or less scrap metal. The only exception was the 50c piece which was still minted in silver for some time When you have silver in circulation, there's a limit on how much money you can mint. When you take the silver away, you can mint with iron if you like. More coins on the market means coins are worth less, and therefore prices are higher I imagine it was likely the same in the UK as in Australia
That's a myth. Inflation was caused by oil prices QUADRUPLING in a few months. Don't forget, Britain was based on manufacturing, so energy prices rising made all prices go up.
@@geoffauldfield4664 The quadrupling of the oil price came in 1974, 3 years after decimalisation. The inflation rate went up from 6.44% in 1970 to 9.44% in 1971, the year of decimalisation, an increase of %0% over 1970. That began a period of high inflation that was greatly exacerbated by the inflationary effects from quadrupling of oil prices on inflation rates in 1974 and 1975. To illustrate this, just compare the inflation rate in 1975 of over 24% in the Uk to 11.7% in France and 9.1% in Germany. Decimalisation helped to build inflation into the system before the oil price shock and the result was more inflation in the UK than our closest manufacturing competitors who were also equally hit by the oil price shock.
Crowns were not generally minted, except as commemorative coins. However we did have the ten shilling note, which I don’t think was mentioned. I remember going into a newsagent on the day we went decimal: I bought my usual newspaper and handed over a pound - the lady behind the counter just thrust a handful of coins at me and said ‘Take whatever you want’.
As children, my brother and I spent a short time with a very nice distant relative I had never met before. He disappeared for a minute and came back and smiled and shook our hands. As he did we could feel he was “secretly” passing each of us a half crown. This was a great gift for a child. It was a pleasantly big coin that you could buy something nice with (maybe chocolate, etc.) This left me with a very good impression of this man. I am American, but always had a fondness for the old type of British coinage..
I still remember my godfather (a saint of a man, RIP Uncle David) giving me a TEN SHILLING note in my birthday card! I thought I could buy the whole of Woolworth's toy department! I couldn't, but I had a damn good try!
@hectorcot597 that's the case in English. Overall, this actually depends on the language spoken, so it's possible, that in their native language, the country is indeed called Great Britain and they just didn't know it's supposed to be called United Kingdom in English
@@Adiee5Priv Britain ruled Kenya from 1897-1963 and we have tons of literature all in the name of Great Britain. The colonisers used UK and Britain synonymously. We know our history man😁
I was born in 1956 and was brought up with the old system and never found it complicated at all, it is what you get use to and is only over complicated to people who have never used it.
When I was a kid my family traveled to London in 1970. Soon after we arrived my mother took me to Selfridge's to go shopping and we got on the Park Lane bus. My mother held out her hand to the conductor when, I think, he said the fare would be something like truppence haipny! She just held out her hand full of coins and said, "take whatever you want!"
The switchover to Decimal went remarkably smoothly, I was in supermarkets all day (all week in fact), there were no problems anywhere. In contrast, Imperial weights and measures are still with us, and it took several decades to stop using Fahrenheit temperatures.
In a way we still use the old systems in a strange an uniquly British hybrid. High temperatures are in F (close to 100), cold temperatures are in C (close to 0/freezing). Gold is still sold by the ounce (different to non-precious metal ounce), speed and distance on roads are in miles. Beer and milk sold in pints while fuel is sold by the litre but we still refer to economy in mpg (gallon!)
The shilling was the same size as a 5p and the 2 shilling was the same size as the 10p for the longest time. The sixpence was also in circulation as 2.5p as a lot of people liked that coin.
@@MrOtistetrax we see that in the Mary Poppins song “Feed the Birds…tuppence (ie two pence) a bag.” We also see the actor playing the boy, Michael holding 2 Great Britain pennies (copper coins) from that time period!
The first time I came to Britain in the early 80s, halfpence coins under the new system were still around. We chatted to British lads in the hotel lobby and they actually parted with one of their halfpennies so I could take it back to Germany.
@@racutis I remember the 1 and 2 shillings being in circulation until the late '80s but didn't realise the sixpence was kept after decimalisation until 1980.
The 20p coin wasn't introduced until 1982, so 11 years after decimalisation. Note on metric system - according to the regualtions, km & m are not authorised for road distance signs.
I asked my grandad what it was like and he had the most British response; he said “It wasn’t that bad” He still has a couple dozen old coins and he shows me them once every often and I find it very interesting how people lived back in the day
@@Ana_crusisnah I am, it was a quite different world before 1971, my grandad has shown me old ha’pennies, pennies, thruppenny bits, silver sixpences, 1 and 2 shilling coins, and a couple of half crowns, he was born in 1941 so basically grew up with the old system, which yes, does sound medieval because that’s basically how old the system was!
@@Gilbertthetart It wasn't "quite a different world" sugarplum. It was the same old world not very long ago. it's a long-standing old system but nobody needs to talk about it as if they are talking about medieval history we only went decimal in England in 1970 I remember it very well I remember the old money it seems perfectly normal to me because I was born in 1956. Like everybody else I used it everyday. You just think it sounds very old and strange to you because you didn't live with it
Farthings lasted to 1961. The Crown was very rare: I didn't see any until they started to issue them as collectors items after decimalisation. There were Guinea coins which were gold but they were antiques by the early years of the 20th Century. And you skipped the stage before the 100p=£1. There was a commission that wanted to halve the value of the base currency and make it equal to half a pound or ten shillings. A shilling would be worth 10p during the transition and tests showed people made fewer errors with the new currency if they tried it that way. But the decision came up during a Labour government and they didn't want the heart ache of the Tories saying that Labour had cut the value of the currency in half. (Yes, it's daft but it would likely have worked.)
@@LeslieGilpinRailways : Yes, they did: The Australian Dollar was half of an Australian pound. They had done studies a few years before decimalization that found it was psychologically easier for shoppers to adjust to, e.g., a "6s 8d" price translating to "67c" instead of "33½p". (Prior to the high inflation of the 1970's, the shilling was the "main" currency unit for everyday purchases, and pounds only entered the picture for things like house and car payments.) But in the UK, politicians and banking interests insisted on keeping the pound around.
I think it was partially that the pound was (and still might be) the largest or 2nd largest reserve currency in the world, so you can't just change its value or demonetize old coins without massive upheaval in the world market. Australia and South Africa were nowhere near that powerful.
The 10 shilling note was an important part of the currency which you neglected to mention. It was replaced, after decimalisation, by the 50 pence piece.
Thanks! I have long encountered those currency terms in books, TV, movies, etc. The first breakdown I ever encountered was in the book “Good Omens” back in the early 1990s which in one chapter broke it down. I still have my notes from the day I encountered that! This was great. I’ve been on a Wodehouse kick for the last year and these come up all the time.
Monty Python had a sketch ("New Brain from Currys") which used the old currency and there is an on-screen note "sketch written before decimalization". The episode was recorded in 1972 but not aired until early in 1973.
And for a long time after, the shilling coin was still in circulation after decimalisation. Up until when the 5p coin was shrunk in 1990 you could find many old shillings still in use, they were still accepted mainly because the size was identical and thus vending machine accepted them as 5p.
That was true in Australia. We went decimal about 5 years earlier when I was 4, so I don’t remember using the old money, but I remember shillings and sixpence being used. The shilling was used as 10 cents and sixpence as 5 cents.
@@brontewcat As a reasonably old Brit, I never understood why a 5p was a sixpence neither!!! Edit: Theres a comment below that mentions that a sixpence was worth 2 1/2p. Thank you (both of you) for making me feel young. Luckily, aged 3, I never had to worry about money pre-decimalisation.
You missed the Ten Bob note. The reason for "nineteen and eleven" was NOT to make things look cheaper. It was to force the assistant to open the til and give change. Otherwise there was a risk that the sale would not get rung up and the pound would go into the assistant's pocket.
Correct. Nowadays tax inspectors and accountants apply an analytical algorithm to CAID (CAsh In Drawer) to check for fraud through the statistical distribution of digits by order of magnitude (I can't recall its name). It was much quicker then if you priced everything a penny below the value of a coin or note. You didn't need a calculator, but before payment cards the bigger shops needed vaccuum tubes to deliver till clears to the Chief Cashier, and cash to the tills. Few people had bank accounts, so people were paid with cash (or a Postal Order that they could cash-in at a Post Office). On pay days, High Streets rang with the sound of trolleys of cash being pushed to and from the banks by the Cashiers' staff, guarded by ex-military Messengers, capped and in smart black and red uniforms. Smaller shops used Gladstone bags, chained to the Cashier or shop owner, but tradesmen might turn up atbthe bank with canvas coin-bags in a big biscuit-tin (no plastic bags then).
@@Dee_Just_Dee Businesses were targetted for weaknesses, just as they are today. A friend of mine was in charge of the unit that tracked cashier fraud in one of our "big four" banks. He said that the underlying motivation was nearly always "fast women and slow horses". I got a really nice car for a good price. The previous owner was a local solicitor who'd been dipping into client accounts. He cheated not only families out of their inheritances, but destroyed the career prospects of his colleagues because nearly all the firm's clients left. NCP, when the biggest car park operator in the UK, was the victim of organised cashier theft. It was one of the biggest cases of theft by insiders in history. Another was at Blenheim Palace, when a family got control of their recruitment of cashiers. Berni Inns was built on portion control to reduce theft by staff. In catering and cash businesses, staff can be under extreme pressure from family members to routinely steal from their employers anf customers - it's just another form of coercive control - and it's not small beer.
I have to agree. I don't know where the name is from and it never existed in France, but it sounds so good. Better than penny, which is a terrible and sounds like petty, I guess at least that describes their users.
Canada introduced decimal currency in the 19th century (mainly to facilitate trade with the US). Australia decimalized in 1966 and New Zealand in 1967.
After playing Warhammer FRP for a year, I've become quite familiar with the old British system. It's not really that complicated all things considered. The main reason for what we now find weird was actually divisions. Since people did not have access to a convenient calculator back in the day, having a currency exchange with a large number of divisors was very convenient. You could have a farmer selling a box of eggs, but you needed only two out of 6. No problem, just divide the value by 3 (or 4, 5, 6 or 12) in your head. Our current system has only two divisors: 2 and 5. Also, the decimal system still has coins/notes for 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 multiples of the basic units. You just give them names, and it's almost as complicated as the old system.
@@voxelfusion9894 Well you could in the old system too, since everything could be broken down into pence (or half-pence) - one pound, two shillings and sixpence is 258 pence. The older system just seems complicated for us today, but for people who grew up with it, it was easy. And the OP is right, mathematically it's a much more flexible system. There's a reason that we divide our days into 24 hours, with 60 minutes per hour, each containing 60 seconds. It's the same reason that we have 360 degrees in a circle: just like with old money, it's more easily divisible.
How often do you actually need to divide currency, though? Adding and subtraction is much more common, and decimal is much more efficient for that task.
@@kalleguld When dividing things - let's say the grocer has a standard price for a dozen eggs, but you don't need a dozen. Well if you have a currency based on units of 12, you can split a dozen into one, two, three, four, and six. With decimal, that's less easy. Obviously we do this kind of thing less now, but it used to be much more common. I should point out that although we've used a base-ten counting system for millennia, decimalisation of currency only began a few hundred years ago. Before that, other systems were used, many not dissimilar to l.s.d. Clearly all those different societies used those systems for a reason, it wasn't just to confuse people in the future. They created systems of currency which suited the needs of people at the time.
@@kalleguld When buying construction supplies for one. A pack of wood costs X, but you only need Y sheets from it. I agree it's not very common otherwise, but the need is there.
I'm from Kenya ( a former British colony) and our currency is based on this; we have the shilling as the basic unit, 100 cents make a shilling and 20 shillings make a pound. Interesting to learn the history of our currency system!
I wasn't born until after decimalisation, but still, I can see how you'd just be able to deal with it if that's the way it was. We count everything in base 10, but we use that counting system for our system of 60 seconds to a minutes, 60 minutes to an hour, 24 hours to a day. And 16 ounces to a pound, 14 pounds to a stone (used pretty much exclusively for bodyweight), but 20 fluid ounces to a pint. And buying fuel in litres but expressing fuel efficiency in miles per gallon. Buying spirits in 25ml or 35ml measures (instead of the old 1/6 or 1/5 of a gill), but beer and cider in pints. But wine in 125ml or 175ml glasses, from 750ml bottles. Bottled beer is in ml, so 330ml or 500ml usually, but sometimes 568ml so you get a pint. Wiring, hoses and pipes, nails and screws: in metres, centimetres and millimetres, but screws might well be in old imperial gauges too - it could be a 4mm or a #8, and it's probably labelled as both. It's probably badged as 25mm long, but it's also labelled as 1". That 50mm x 100mm timber is going to be referred to as 2"x4", regardless of what it actually measures, and of course we all think of ourselves in feet and inches, so our clothes are sized with inches round the waist and chest, and down the inseam. But if you buy fabric for making clothes it's sold by the metre. We spend our lives surrounded by a mish-mash of numerical conventions. £sd seems awkward, looking back, but did it seem unworkably complex when it was in use? No, not really. It was just the thing that you learned.
You've put it very clearly - it was what people had to deal with so they got on with it. It's the same with English spelling - throughout my life I've heard experts telling us that it needs to be simplified and it's too difficult for people. Whereas most people - even not very well-educated people did a good job of grasping correct spelling. There seem to be more semi-literate English people now than when I was a kid despite having a supposedly better and longer education.
Originally the pint wa 16 oz.. This why it is in the US it was after 1776 That brittain changesd its meeasuring sustem tpo e even more confusing. Originally weighs asand vcolumes were in powers of 2
And Boris (before he resigned) wanted to bring back imperial measurements to the nation! I know he's a barmpot anyway but it's a good thing he resigned when he did.
It wasn't that bad considering that back then no everyday item costs more than may be 1 pound. For comparison a new car was about 600 pound and a years wage less than 1000 pound in the 1970s and even less in earlier years. So you basically only used pence and shillings.
@@kreuner11 Abandoning the Gold standard, endless money printing causing mass inflation and also governments pretending they can control economies consisting of millions of people.
@@ALEXANDER1318 you do realize the 1929 crash happened with the gold standard still in place, and also that there is not enough gold in our solar system to have the USD, let alone all other world currencies attach their value to that metal, right?
@@Blackgriffonphoenixg Depends on how much value you want to give the USD. Remember that in those days, most people payed with penny's or dimes, with dollars only being for large expenses. All the inflation of the past 80 or so years would need to be undone, bit that'd be fine.
@@Blackgriffonphoenixg you don't understand currency because you live in a world where money is paper that buys more paper than it's worth yet printing more is a life ruining crime.
Hilarious that there was a time that the US did things the most coherent way and many countries used them as a role model of standardization, that was very long ago. Now, I understand the Americans’ insistence of holding on to needlessly complicated systems because they feel the need to be SPECIAL! comes from.
Except American use a dozenal base system which is better for basic everyday measurements than decimal. But hey, I guess you must really enjoy a third of a kilometer being 333.3333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333… meters.
@@TheRealHelvetica and you must really love 0.2 being almost but not quite 51/256. Base 12 is retarded. In everyday life you don't need the accuracy of that 4th decimal in 3.333 you complain about. and in anything where you do need numbers decimal is easier to calculate. There is zero downside to decimal.
@@mabamabam can you even name an imperial unit? No because clearly you’re so uneducated you don’t even know that a foot is a third of a yard. 😏 Enjoy your inferior commie units europoor.
I remember in the early months of decimalisation when both sets of coins were in circulation,we were encouraged to “ give more and get change “. There was even a jingle sung by The Scaffold which I can still remember.
I very much enjoyeed this broadcast. I was 17 when Britain decimalised it's currency and had been taught both 'metric' and 'imperial' at school from infancy. In no way am I suggesting any return to pounds, shillings and pence but routinely adding and subtracting what now seems to be mind blowing sums in LSD was commonplace in my youth. Everyone could do it easily and quickly, even people who could not read and write. Decimalisation and the soon to follow invention of the pocket calculator have somehow robbed us all of a fiscal mental agility that was once commonplace. Just an observation
Certainly an interesting memory, though if I were to guess between those two factors which mattered the most... Then I figure it was the calculators really that reduced peoples mental agility at numbers and the decimal system probably not at all. After all there were plenty of countries using decimal number systems for far longer and I've certainly not heard of them having trouble calculating their money. One can read of similar things in history really, like how there was a complaint in how writing was undermining the memory skill of people. I guess the truth here is, is that people will put less time in training something if they have an easier alternative and then use that time for other things.
I was born in 1955, and count myself bilingual in both coinage and units of measurement. What I am way, way better at than almost every young adult, let along kid is mental arithmetic and dealing with orders of magnitude. That's a legacy of using slide rules and log tables. Also, I recall those working behind the bar had no problem totting up the cot of a round on the fly and working out the change. The really good ones could handle two rounds at once. Also, that coins had nicknames added a little character to the currency. Now that has gone, then a bit of British social history and colour has now disappeared, replaced by the anodyne numbers. Even the Americans have retained nickels, dimes, quarters and, strangely, pennies.
I was born in 1978, so still had plenty of school teachers around who had taught both "old" and "new" money, we even had a few old textbooks with math sums in it using the old system. One of them challenged us to make change using old currency, and of course none of us could do it. She was able to do so without even thinking about it, as I'm sure anyone from her generation could, I also remember her saying that in her day they didn't learn their times tables up to 12, instead it was up to 20, which I'm sure made working with old money simpler. Like anything, it's what you're used to.
When I was growing up in the 1960s, the 'three pence' coin was usually referred to as a 'threepenny bit' (pronounced 'threppenny'), though older people sometimes said 'thruppenny' or 'thruppence'. By then it was a twelve--sided brass coin, quite unlike any other British coin, though prior to 1946 it had been a much smaller conventionally shaped silver one.
@@alanmahoney167 I was born in 1957 and am pretty sure I never saw a silver threepence in circulation. The twelve-sided brass coins were manufactured from 1937 onwards, but they also continued to mint the silver ones until 1945.
I have a few setting items which I require I make myself familiar with when I write any story: - Hard Cultural Taboos - Words that are non-existent in another language - Travel time (how long it takes to get to different places in the setting, and what can be used) - And Currency Understanding (Exchange rate, comparitve item value, how their currency works) Only five minutes in, and you've basically blacklisted an entire era of a country. Thanks.
The only times I'v encountered the Guinea in my life, are in certain auction settings. A Guinea is £1.05, and those extra cents represents a 5% fee to the house. So if you win a rare coin for "2000 Guineas", you pay £2000 to the seller and an extra £100 to the house, for a total of £2100.
@@19gregske55 I think I heard that it was also used as a status symbol. Bespoke tailors and other high end shops would list their prices in Guineas. Buying something that was xx Guineas was automatically higher status than something priced in pounds.
TurtleMarcus- I'm English and recall saying to a GI in 1965 that my suit cost £10/10/-( Ten pounds tenshillings) or ten guineas- he hit the roof as he was of Italian extraction and thought that I was calling him a Guinea- apparently an insult- at least at the time.
Ten bob notes were indeed very common. I'm surprised they were missed out from the video. Even the Beatles sang about Mean Mr Mustard keeping a ten bob note up his nose!
Fascinating. One minor correction... the sixpence was still valid currency post-decimalisation, it was worth 2.5p - until about 1980, when it was removed from circulation. I don't remember decimalisation, but I do remember the sixpence when I was a child in the 70s. It never dawned on me to ask why it was call a 'six'-pence when it was only worth 2.5p :-)
Many were. The new nearest-equivalent are almost the same size, shape and weight. e.g. 5p (before 1990) and shilling, new 2p and old penny. Even the modern £1 is roughly the same size as the old Sovereign, which to this day has the nominal value of £1 (but being gold, has a much greater collectible and bullion valule).
In New Zealand, following decimalisation in 1967 it remained common to find an old shilling coin in your pocket change throughout the '70s and beyond, masquerading as a ten cent piece. Florins (20¢) were also quite common.
@@TillyOrifice Same here (UK). The old shilling was accepted as 10p until 1990 when the decimal 10p coin was changed to a different design, weight and size.
@@danwilliams75 But the 5p was half the size of the 10p. Yes, value-wise the shilling became 5p, having been 1/20th of a pre-decimal pound (12d). But coin-wise, the 10p was the shilling (I particularly remember it as I had 'magic' disappearing coin box made for the old shilling that fit the decimal 10p). The new 10p and old shilling (12d) are the same size. The difference did confuse me as a kid. It's only recently I found that a shilling was actually 12 pence rather than 5. In the same way that the decimal 2p is the same as the old pre-decimal penny and the new penny as the old ha'penny. Decimal coins are roughly double the face value of their equivalent pre-decimal coin. 50p was not a direct replacement, as that would be the 10-shilling note. So the same is true: 50p is half a new pound, as 10 shilling is to the old. 20p is a brand new denomination introduced for the decimal era (1982). There is no pre-decimal 1/5th of a pound.
Yes you would. Kids practised these sums in school as part of their Maths lessons in junior school (age 7 - 11) and it became second nature. Most grown ups in the UK in those days left formal education at age 15, and got a job or an apprenticeship, the older ones had left at 14.If they could do it, you could have done it easily.
5:13 "this system is ridiculous" proceeds to show clip of coins being weighed to determine their total value. Oh, I'm sorry, you didn't hear about that? The entire British coinage system neatly followed a rule of weights, so no matter how mixed up a bag of coins would be, the weight would always add up to a number corelating with the value. Many scales used to have markers to help with this activity.
The US used the same system, where the dime, quarter, half-dollar, and dollar coins each contained an amount of silver (or post-1965, copper/nickel alloy) proportional to their value.
@@elton1981 of course, you can do that anywhere, but can you weigh a bag with 30 quarters, 17 pennies and 12 dimes without having to sit down and sort them?
Don't forget the ten bob note! Also crowns were rarely seen. When you used the system every day it wasn't too bad. I think the old system made people more numerate than they are now. Some young people even find it difficult using tens as well as where to put a decimal point.
As much as I love 240 (it’s a Highly Composite Number, it makes 3rds, 4ths, and even 16ths and 24ths whole integers as opposed to 100 which only makes 4ths, 5ths, 10ths, and 25ths nice), once everyone was using £s instead of shillings as their default it gets quite unwieldy
The number 240 still lives on in US nutrition labeling, with the standard "cup" being defined as 240 mL. (The traditional definition is 8 fluid ounces = 231/16 cubic inches, which works out to exactly 236.5882365 mL, but rounding it up to 240 is just so useful for fractions.)
I remember learning times tables which had an extra column after the result for its conversion into shillings and pence. So instead of just reciting 10 10s is one hundred you would recite 10 10's is one hundred, eight and 4 pence. Accounts books had columns for pounds shillings and pence and an extra margin for halfpence or farthings. Decimal conversion meant grocers and money handlers have to have two cash registers and two sets of bags their coins. Shops took in the old coins and only handed out change in the new coins so that over a few weeks all the old coins were taken out of public circulation. I recall that coins like 50p,20p,10p and 5p were introduced early as they had exact equivalents in the old currency, 10s,4s,2s and 1s respectively.The old half crown, 2/6 was got rid of some time earlier. Also got rid of was the old 1/2d coins. Then on the 15th Feb 1971 the conversion to the new money was made with pricing being expressed in pounds and pence and 1p and 2p coins being brought into use to make up the set. The notes remained the same as the old notes until later. Ireland, unlike the UK, made the much later change to the Euro in 2001 and we had a similar changeover, this time with the entire set of notes, coins having to be changed in one day. It wasn't as diffcult to do as most transactions were being done by card, unlike the 1970's when everything was cash.
@@jgdooley2003 50p coin replaced the 10/- note, 10p coin the 2/- coin (or florin) and 5p coin the 1/-. The 20p coin wasn't until much later (its pre-decimal equivalent, a 4/- coin, was a brief unsuccessful experiment in the Victorian era).
I was a baby when they changed the money, but florins and shillings were still used as 10p and 5p pieces for many, many years, and so I grew up pretty familiar with them.
Crowns weren't in circulation, as they were only special issues. We also had a ten shilling note. It wasn't that difficult, anyway. Old coins were accepted for several months after D-day, but change was always given in new money.
It was no problem. For two farthings I could get a ha’penorth of broken biscuits. I could change three pennies for a thrupenny bit. Two of those made a tanner and two tanners made a bob. Up the scale was a two bob coin, and add a tanner to that and you got half a crown. I don’t remember a lot of crowns around in my day, but if you could get two you could change them for a brown ten bob note. Two ten bob notes got you a quid and then if you saved up a bit you could trade up for a fiver. Doctor’s fees were in Guineas, which were a quid with one bob added on. Copper coins were always bits but sliver coloured ones were pieces. Hence “bits and pieces”.
But 2/6 was half a crown. or half a dollar. Doctors fees = you must be ancient if you paid these, they stopped in 1948 unless yyiu were rich and went rivate.
Not sure about the "bits and pieces" (in Scotland). And yes you rarely say "Crowns". Towards the end of the old system - they tended to be struck as presentation coins. The last I am aware of was the 1965 "Churchill" commemorative.
As a lad growing up in 1960's Britain I don't remember £sd being a problem to anyone. Using it came naturally. A six pence piece was always a 'tanner', a shilling was always a 'bob'. Never used the term 'florin'; it was always a 'two bob bit'. The crown didn't exist in practice, but the half-crown did- it was considered a tidy sum if you had one in your pocket. It would make for a good night out in town! The guinea (21 shillings) was a term widely used to show prices in shops, but there was no actual guinea coin. There was also the ten shilling (ten bob) note, by the way- you really were able to have a right royal night out with one of those.
Naturally... after being exposed to it regularly nearly every day from childhood. I assume you didn't have to do much accounting with large numbers of transactions. That must have really sucked before decimalisation.
Ha ha ... A fun little mockumentary! Actually I didn't find the pre-decimal system remotely difficult, nor did I find the switchover difficult. The only thing we can't do with a pound of 100 pence is divide it into as many fractions as we used to be able to do with the 240 penny pound. For example a third of a pound was a nice round six and eight ... now it's 33.3333 recurring pence. We still pack groceries in cartons of 6, 12 or 24. Before decimalisation it meant that we could convert from wholesale prices to retail unit prices extremely easily.
Nor can prices by increased by as little as one old penny ie 1/240th! The least a price can increase by today is 1p ie 1/100th, so a much bigger increase.
@@Lily_The_Pink972 In this day and age where a simple candy bar costs you nearly a pound, I think it's really trifling for anybody to complain about differences less than a decimal pence.
I remember when Ireland converted over from the Punt to Euros, there was a point in time where both prices were displayed, the government even sent out conversion calculators to every household.
They did the same in Belgium, still have that calculator somewhere I think and also a little "magical " card where the numbers change depending on how you are holding the card.
I’m an American who had a British grandmother that moved to the US in the 1950s. Back when I was a kid, my dad had the job of counting money from vending machines at the place he worked. When doing this at my grandmother’s house, she would always tell us how easy we had it counting the various coins and notes and we were never sure why. This video explains a lot
On my first day as a pupil in a corn merchant’s office, the manager handed me a weighbridge ticket 5 tons 2 cwt ( hundredweights) 3 qur ( quarters) 1 stone ( 14 lb - pounds weight) @ £24 12 shillings and 6d ( six pence). “ What does it come to, boy?” He asked. When I asked for a piece of paper to work it out .” Lord love you, lad. What have they been teaching you all these years at school.” Actually they used a book of tables called a Ready Reckoner for those sort of calculations . The changeover came at a time of inflation and certainly speeded it up for smaller items. It wasn’t long before an item which had cost 6d ( six old pence) was 6p (six new pence) or nearly one shilling and two pence halfpenny in “real” money.
@@roboftherock If you look at any other country which didn't switch their currency in the 70's you'll find that over that decade the prices increased by about a factor 2-4. Which is about a 10-15% per year inflation on average. Pound decimalisation didn't cause this and blaming greedy grocery stores etc. is just another deflection of blame by the money printers and bank lenders who lent money into existence (yes, this is how it works; the bank doesn't have the money it lends you, but debt spends just like money).
Fun fact: the guinea is still used in auctions today. The reason for that is that the price includes the fee for the auction house. A guinea is £1.05. Example: you buy a painting for 3000 guineas it comes to 3150 pounds which is the price you pay to the auction house.
Funnily enough the really posh shop in my home city, Manchester Kendal Milne used to price it's stuff in guineas. As my dad pointed out, it was a way of over-charging the rich and stupid while making them feel superior .
It's almost like the difference between a gigabyte (1000) and a gibibyte (1024). It's basically the same number plus an overhead fee :P. Except this difference is used to undersell people products they dont realize have less technical capacity than they say they do in common parlance
Not the reason; there's an Article on Wikipedia which explains at length but briefly the value of gold grew faster than that of silver so the Guinea coin initially valued at £1 or 20 shillings varied, sometimes considerably. in 1717 is was formally set at 21 shillings and after the coin ceased to be struck in 1816 the Guinea remained as a unit of account. The Coinage Act 1816 replaced the Guinea coin with the sovereign, back at 20/- and slightly smaller so the gold content was, at least initially, equal to the value of the silver in 20 shilling coins but it also redefined the value of the Pound Sterling in terms of gold instead of silver which meant that fluctuations in the value of silver no longer affected its trading value and that silver coinage of lower purity could be struck without debasing their value.
Prices in guineas were usual for expensive items before decimalization, such as luxury cars, racehorses, expensive rifles and shotguns, yachts, prizes at sporting events, art and expensive items at auctions, large amounts of land, rents and leases of properties in upper-class parts of cities, doctors' and other professionals' fees, tailored clothing and other things perceived as being "upper class". The abbreviation for an amount in guineas is a lower-case 'g'.
One of the advantages of the old system was that it could be divided so many ways. A pound could be evenly divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20, 30, 50, 60, and 80. This was probably a good thing in a time when many people had very little money and a few people had a lot of money. It made it possible to price a huge variety of goods in a way that was easy to calculate and pay.
That's the reason so many old systems used 12 or 60 for fractional units, those numbers have more ways to divide them then any number of similar size. That's why there are 12 inches to the foot and 12 troy ounces to the pound. And even in metric you still have 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. You can see the advantage of this system, if I have 1 hour to complete a test with 15 questions on it its trivial to figure out that means you have 4 minutes per question if you want to finish on time. Now compare that to trying to figure out how far 1/15 of a kilometer is without a calculator.
@matthewroger6889 I've seen that kind of argument before, the thing is there's no situation where you'd have to figure out 1/15th of a km. Tat kind of fraction is not used in metric - because, as you said, it would be wildly impractical. Even someone saying "1/4 of a km" instead of "250 meters" would sound weird
@@alanpeters874 wasn't charging interest seen as somewhat sinful for most of the middle ages? Might explain why that concern wasn't really accounted for in the old money system.
Suddenly the money system in Harry Potter makes sense: it was a more extreme version of the UK of the past, thereby highlighting how wizarding society is bereft of magical technology.
I think you give too much to JK, think it was just a mix of old style and some whimsy. If there were better divisions, I could see it, but hers is all odd numbered or indivisible.
It's so much worse than that - apparently "imperial" currency referes not to the old currency of the British Empire, but to the *Roman* empire, which we adopted. The Shilling is 5p, btw, because it is defined as 1 / 20th of a pound - 20p has nothing to do with it. If you go to other European countries, such as Spain, they'll have something similar; in Spain it was "veinte duros" (twenty shillings") to the, now defunct, *libra* (Roman pound).
Not true; ours was not the Roman system, though ‘d’ does stand for denarii and ‘L’ for Libra, it was introduced by king Offa in around 800AD. And Imperial System applies to units of measurement used in the British Empire, it was not used to refer to the currency.
in the Uk my family works in the equestrian (horses) industry, we still sometimes use guineas at auctions with one guinea being £1 and 5 pence, with the 5 pence being the commission to the auction house
Old 1/- and 2/- coins continued until just after the introduction of the 20p, and were used interchangeably with 5p and 10p coins until the latter were reduced in size (both events in the late '80s). You missed the 10/- note replaced earlier (late '60s) with the large 50p - replaced with a smaller version in the early '90s. Oh and the old 6d (Tanner) continued in use (21/2p) until the demise of the 1/2p. In Scotland, it's still common to refer to 50p as, "Ten Bob."
Actually, the 1/- circulated as 5p until 31st December 1990 and the 2/- was in circulation until 30th June 1993. The reduced size 50p entered circulation on 1st September 1997.
i still call it a "ten bob bit" and our local buses i shocked some older people when i say the fare is 50shilling because 50 shillimg could buy a weeks food shopping for our family
The ha'penny went in 84; the tanner went in 80. I still have a collection of most of the old coins, except the sovereign, which I never had as I was just a child pre decimalisation.
And the video incorrectly assumed that the 20p coin was introduced at the same time as the new decimal coins, ie 15/2/1971. In fact it wasn’t introduced until the early 80s, around 1982, IIRC. I think that “Granny Gets The Point”, the information film shown repeatedly on TV during 1970/71, would’ve been improved if they’d pointed out the 1,2,5 pattern of the coins & notes. The ½p and lack of 20p threw out the system a bit, but essentially we have (or had), ½p, 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1, £2 (again not a thing in the 1970s), £5, £10, £20, £50. All numbers divisible by 10 or 100. As I said on this video a year ago, there were far more ways to equally divide up 240. The video is unfairly biased towards how complicated it was pre-20th century. In the 60s just before the change (forgive the pun) the number of coins was far more manageable and a bit more logical than the video makes out. The puzzle would’ve been far easier to solve if they’d included the 10 shilling note, and the £5 note in our options to choose from. It took me a few minutes to do the addition, but I did it, and got it right.
I was born in 1957 and I just about remember the Farthing (quarter penny) it went out of circulation in 1961. You very rarely saw a Crown coin. The one missing item from his list of coins and notes was the 10 bob note (10 shilling note).
I found it quite neat to learn you needed 960 farthings to make 1 pound. Nearly 1000! Interestingly, the coins was about the same size as an American or Canadian 1 cent coin.
Last year farthings were ever minted was 1955. In 1962, they were declared to no longer be legal tender. I have some farthings I found at coin stores in their foreign coin bargain bin. Last type ever made had a wren on the reverse and the "young head" portrait of Elizabeth II.
As one who grew up in the UK in the 1940s - 1950s I can say that no-one had any problems with the pre-decimal currency We learnt the multiplication table up to 12X12 = 144 We used to have mental arithmetic exercises involving the total cost of items costing pounds and shillings per pound weight Today most people can't get sums right even with a computer By the way, the crown coin did not exist (or was not in regular use) I never saw one. Perhaps it was only struck for commemorations
Interesting. You forgot the ten shilling note. Crowns were rarely used or seen. Some farthings were used into the late 1950s in sweet shops and stuff ( I remember seeing them ) but they weren't legal tender. I had quite a large collection of farthings.
I learned about this in a footnote in a Terry Pratchett book, where the punchline was ""people resisted the decimal system because they thought it was too complicated".
A couple of errors. The farthing was still around in the early sixties, but was very little seen. The crown had for many years been mainly issued as commemorative coin; it was legal tender, but rarely spent. There never was a 25p coin. The sixpence (known as a tanner, zack was an Australian term) was not withdrawn immediately due to public sentiment and was used as 2.5p coin. The half-crown was sometimes referred to as 'half-a-dollar'; card-schools continued to use the term half-a-dollar as a stake long after the half-crown had been withdrawn. One shilling and two shilling coins remained in circulation for a number of years as five and ten pence coins. You missed out the ten shilling note (which had been withdrawn around 1969) and was replaced by the seven sided fifty-pence coin. Only the 1d and 3d coins were pulled as quickly as possible due to the confusion that they caused.
Also, many of Britain's former colonies went decimal before Britain did. The Canadians followed America into decimalisation across the 1860s and 1870s, South Africa eventually followed suit in 1961, then Australia in 1966 and New Zealand in 1967.
Before the arrival of the digital age this system actually made a lot of sense. I used it in England and Australia until Australia went decimal in 1966. I was taught to use £ -/ d in primary school and then within months dollars and cents. There was a reason why the UK and some of her territories kept the sterling system for so long, because almost everyone was happy with it !
@N Fels The British system evolved and there were numerous denominations were introduced and discontinued if they proved unpopular. It was not a conscious plan but purely trial and error (with the exception of the florin). I think that on the face of it most people unfamiliar with the British system would say what a mess! But I have been told that when mathematicians are first told of the system their faces light up! Ahhh! they say. The fact remains that people brought up with the system were generally satisfied with it and there was no great call from the public to introduce the decimal system. I have had first hand experience with the system so I know what I am talking about. I will say though that the digital age and inflation will have made the system somewhat redundant today. Though some have suggested that calculators could easily be adapted to the Sterling system if required.
Agreed,. We spent so much time in primary school learning stuff like 5 half crowns = 12/6 etc. etc. Turned out to be useless. However, things were much much cheaper then. A weekly wage might be as little as £20. So most things you buy were priced in shillings and pence. Bread 1/-, beer 2/6 a pint, bus fare 2d. Anything costing more than 7 or 8 shillings you would tend to pay for with a note (10/- or £1). Also supermarkets were new and smaller, so you tend to be spending small amounts in lots of different shops, butchers, bakers etc. Anything costing less than £5 would tend to be priced in shillings, eg 59/11 like a modern day £2.99. As a child I even had a money box that counted how much you saved. Only worked in shillings and pence. Presume they thought a child could not save as much as a pound.
In my time (growing up in the fifties and sixties) the Crown (five shillings, not ten) wasn't really used in commerce. It was only struck as a ceremonial, to commemorate Churchill on his death for instance, and it was b-i-g. Other problems with the predecimal coinage were that the coins were way too large; they pulled your coin-side trouser pocket half way down your butt. And there was no logic to the size of the various coins. You had to pull a handful out of your pocket and pick through to see what you'd got. Easier to hand over a pound or ten shilling note and receive even more oversized, useless coins in change.
Even in the 🇺🇸 where our currency supposedly makes sense, the 5c piece is significantly larger than the 10c piece. Indeed the 10c piece is the smallest American coin.
@@donatist59 American Coins used to be minted in silver, and would carry their weight in silver. If you have a pile of dimes, quarters, and halves you can calculate their value simply by weighing them. There used to be a half dime coin that was exactly half the weight of a dime, but it was replaced by the nickel during the Civil War. Likewise, the old dollar coins were double the weight of the halves until they were replaced by the smaller Susan B Anthony dollars in 1979.
I'm a Canadian who , at 15 in 1966 found myself in a school in St Leonard's on Sea for about 3 months and I can tell you that though I had no problem learning the money in everyday life , math class and the computations necessary were difficult for someone who had grown up were all you had to do to change any math problem to finance was put a "$" in front of it.
The shilling and two shilling coins remained in common use alongside 5p's and 10p's (which they were the same size as) up until the early nineties when they replaced all the coins with smaller versions.
no idea why this video got 1 million views but thanks
no idea why I got recommended this video in 2024 but thanks
@@TheModeler99 Ditto
You’re not the only one 🤷🏼
Same
Its really interesting.
Cashier: “Your total comes out to a joey, a tanner and a bob.”
Guy at checkout with his 3 sons: _”I’m sorry young ones.”_
It wouldn't be a bob, a tanner and a joey.
Actually, it would be "1 and 9", "1 shilling and 9 pence" or "1 shilling and 9", depending on how they'd want to say it.
"Three Bob"
*Goes to a construction site*
I can't imagine there'd be any tanners in 1960s Britain
Haha
@@TheoHiggins Well, I know of one - Elsie Tanner!
My personal favourite example of this is in the very first episode of Doctor Who. Even before the change had been officially announced in the real world, the Doctor's granddaughter revealed herself as a time traveller when she forgot that the pound hadn't yet been decimalized in 1963. It's certainly aged better than some of their other predictions for the future.
It wasn't a prediction, decimalization was already on the books waiting to be introduced. Predictive programming by the BBC.
@@ayupmeduck57088 years?
@@ayupmeduck5708you say it wasn't a prediction but was predictive. Sounds like the same thing.
@@Roddy556 Gotta love those yes but no but actually yes types...
@@Roddy556 The amazing logic of conspiracy theorists. Will make anything mundane into a conspiracy
Have you seen the clouds today?
It's not that people felt the new decimal system was "too difficult to learn," it's just that most people had to spend the first year calculating the new prices into the old money, to decide whether shop keepers were cheating them or giving them a good deal. Even now, 40 years on, it's a trope of casual conversation among those of a certain generation to say, about almost anything measurable, from speed limits to the length of dress fabric--"What's that in old money?"
They certainly did cheat as well!
reminds me of when the Netherlands changed from Gulden to Euros, there was an official set conversion rate and people very much converted the prices to see if they were getting a good or bad deal; even to this day, some older people (and some younger people who adhere to very conservative opinions) still convert Euro prices back to Gulden and then go on a rant about how the Euro has made things more expensive, being either clueless or wilfully ignorant to inflation that would've equally happened if we hadn't made the switch
A friend of mine, who's sadly now dead, often went on about decimslisation, saying how we lost a 140 pennies.
Boomers gonna boom
@N Fels my grandparents (CDA voters), I've also seen people online who support PVV, FvD, and/or JA21 who do it (and that's where you'll find the younger people who do it as well)
I can see that sort of stuff coming from SP as well, they're the most conservative party on the left, they're populists, and there's a reason voters sometimes go between SP and PVV (not sure if it's also the case with FvD and JA21 going to/from SP)
Worth pointing out that the "crown" coin was EXTREMELY rare. To the extent that my grandmother told me it didn't exist. This means that there was a very common "half-crown" coin, representing the handy value of 2.5 shillings but no "crown" coin. Bonkers.
From what I've read people from back in Victorian times didn't like it because it was too big. They could've just made it smaller though.
I got a half crown pocket money per week.
In the mid 60s school dinner money was 5 shillings, which was paid using two half crown coins. The crown coin was indeed rare and can't remember it ever being used in practice, but was minted as a collectors coin for commemorative purposes.
Funny. We have kronor in Scandinavia to this day and Austria used to have Kronen.
Don't forget guineas and sovereigns.
This reminds me of a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch which had the 'old system' as part of the dialog while the phrase "Sketch Written Before Decimalisation" appeared on the screen.
I remember that one: it's the one where two pepperpots buy a strap on brain that malfunctions.
(New Brain from Currys was the sketch. I looked it up because I was curious. Only video online is pretty shoddy, so hard to make it out, but the text is present.)
Tax is 5 pence of a further sixpence. 5 pence of a further sixpence? And what about the last penny? I embezzled it.
„That shilling, is it net or gross?“ „It’s British, sir.“
The Beatles "Taxman" should have the same disclaimer. "There's one for you, nineteen for me, 'Cause I'm the taxman." Wilson's Labour government had the Beatles paying a 95% supertax.
"Wales was the only sensible one" well there's a sentence I never thought I would hear
Hello
@@chiefsargeet hello mr welshman, wales is the greatest country on earth imo
It's .. it's hear
@@chiefsargeet Hello big sexy welshman
@@chiefsargeet hello
5:46 The £sd system isn’t from the medieval times!
It’s actually from much longer ago, being based upon the roman Libra-Solidus-Dinarius system, which is why the abbreviation for pence is a d.
It's also why the / symbol is called a "solidus" and was commonly used to represent shillings. Fun fact, the official Unicode name of the \ symbol is the "reverse solidus."
thanks for this 👌
TMW your country used the roman currency system for literal millenia. Nothing bad there, it worked for a long time.
“which is why the abbreviation for pence is a d”
Thank you, I was wondering why.
No it *is* from early medieval times. More specifically the late 8th century early 9th century. The Roman system of coinage was quite different. They didn't have a 'libra' coin, it was a weight not a currency and the relative values of the coinages such as solidus or denarius were varied over the course of the roman empire. The As was also the most common coin in circulation and sestertii were used more for large value transaction. The l.s.d came from the Emperor Charlamagne and his father Peppin who rationalised a the chaotic world of post-Roman coinages inside the Frankish empire that were awash with often debased coinages from the old empire, Byzantium and local mints often with names referencing Roman coins that no longer had value. He forced the overhaul coinage system of the Carolingian empire to match the l.s.d system. The Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia under Offa adopted Carlemagne's system to faciliate trade which effectively replaced old Anglo-Saxon coins over time. The names are only in Latin because Latin names for coins were still common after the Roman empire collapsed.
Also, the idea that this was used for centuries is not exactly true either. For most of the history of the system the libra and solidus were mainly a values used for grouping large values for bookkeeping purposes, units of account - just as the guinea always was up until decimalisation. The penny was the common coin used in everyday transactions and most people didn't have to worry about other coins. Only from about the time of Henry VII did coins like shillings (originally called testoons), crowns and gold soveriegns (worth 1 pound) actually started to be used, and primarily only by merchants, not everyday people in normal life. These values weren't even the only unit of account that existed, there were others such as the Mark which was a set weight of gold - in Germany this unit of account became the basis for latter coinages but not in England. Indeed, when you realise that people grouped the values of large number of pennies (and then shillings) in pounds, this was the value of a fictional pound of gold that I they were comparing it against. And that is why there is a weight value called pound and a currency.
1:27 The pause after “The Pound” was incredible.
Fun fact: You know how the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland usually wears a hat with a card on it that reads "10/6"?
You probably thought that was a weird size measurement, but it's actually the price tag! That hat costs 10 shilling 6 pence, therefore half a Guinea.
He's such an idiot, he wears a hat with the price tag still on it!
He's a hatter; he makes hats. He's simply wearing his merchandise.
Actually, the price was never originally mentioned in the story. The price was put there by the illustrator, and used by Charles when he adapted the story for younger readers.
Joggers do that in the US today 😂
Bruh, you bought the hat. Take the dam stickers off!
Joggers gonna jog though.
He isn't an idiot, he's a salesperson.
@@LMB222 Or... Both!
It took me about three seconds to do the math in my head for how many coins were needed. I was totally wrong; but still, three seconds!
So was he, as he forgot about the 10 bob note that would remove the need for the crowns.
It's easy. Just pay a tenner (a ten pound note) and get change back.
I was done instantly with the math! I got no answer and didn't try. But still, instant results!
I didn't calculate the coins, but I did do the sum in my head, and not in the right to left pen-and-paper method he used. £3+£5=£8, 16s+15s>£1 so 8 becomes £9. Then 15s is 5s less than a pound, so you subtract 5 from 16 to get 11s. 11+10 > 12, so 11s becomes 12s, and either 10-1 or 11-2 both leave 9d.
I can get the wrong answer in 1 second
I grew up with this and remember it well.
I was born in 1953 and was 18 when the system changed ( prelude to joining the common market).
The crown wasn't commonly used then. It tended to be a commemorative coin, given as a present for children to put in their money boxes.
We have coins like that usually half dollar of dollar coins
@@MustacheDLuffy yea, many 2 euro coins also have special engraving on the back
@@sluin I have a large dollar coin which is special to me since it was given by my parents when I was young
Older crown coins(92.5% silver) are equivalent to the US Peace dollar/Morgan Dollar
Was going to way the same thing. What we did have though were 10 shilling notes. BTW the way the amounts were written down on prices is not as shown here. It was not (say) £3 3s 11d but £3 3/11. If the amount was smallish (say less than £5) prices were often given in shillings and pence - say 59/11. Oh and we never said "pence" it was always "punce" - short "uh" sound. I have no memory of farthings - I think they went before the 60s when I was born.
As an elderly Englishman who was brought up in the days of predecimal currency, I would like to make a few comments, if I may, some of which have already been touched on by other viewers.
1. Firstly, I think the "difficulty" of the pre- decimal British currency is exaggerated.
It was certainly no harder than other parts of the Imperial system (that is still in use in the USA. If one was brought up with it, it was easy. Even as small children not yet at school, we would know what "half a crown" was, and know exactly how far our sixpence a week pocket money would stretch.
On the other hand, we were well into primary school before we would know how many acres there were in a square mile, and probably in secondary school before we learned how much a nautical mile, or a barrel of oil was, or that American gallons, barrels or (short) "tons" were different to our own.
Of course, in those days we had no personal computers, pocket calculators or mobile telephones, we learnt multiplication tables at school, and we had mothers at home to teach us useful things, so maybe we were a bit more adept at mental arithmetic that the current generation of kids.
2. While the difficulties of the old system are emphasised, the advantages are often overlooked. The biggest advantage of the British predecimal system was divisibility.
Unlike the Decimal system, which is only divisible by multiples of 2 or 5, the pound, being comprised of 240 pence, could be divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 or 10 While still coming out with a whole number of pence. Try dividing a dollar between three people so that each one gets an equal share.
3. Personally, I have never heard of a halfpennyworth being pronounced "haipth", and I went to several countries during the time they were using predecimal currency.. The usual abbreviations were "heypney's worth" or "ha'p'orth" (As in the well known proverb "Don't spoil a ship for a ha'p'orth of tar", meaning don't spoil a job by false economies or skimping on materials) Of course, English is famous for its many dialects, so I can't rule out the possibility that "Haipths" may have been used somewhere. Yorkshire, perhaps?
4 You were somewhat dismissive of the Guinea, relating how in recent times it has come to represent 21 shillings, leading shops to quote prices in guineas rather than pounds in order to gain an extra 5%. That is true enough since the Guinea was demonetized in the early 19th Century. But that was at the end of its long and illustrious history. In the early modern period, the Guinea, so named because it was originally minted from West African gold, was England's (later Great Britain's) original gold coin, preceding the gold Sovereign by about two centuries, and, with the growth of British trade, it became a very prestigious coin. Also, since, the value of the pound was based on a set amount in British (silver) currency, but the Guinea was minted from one ounce of pure gold. in its heyday, the value of the Guinea would fluctuate against the Pound, depending on the relative values of gold and silver. That facilitated trade by allowing British merchants to trade in either silver-based Pounds or golden Guineas. At the time the Guinea was demonetized, the value of the Guinea was somewhere near 21 shillings, so the amount of 21 shillings became popularly known as "a guinea". However, actual gold Guineas (which are still minted to this day) are now considered as "bullion coins" and collectors items (like the modern day South African "Krugerrand") and if you wanted to buy one it would cost you a hell of a lot more than 21 shillings.
(another comment coming)
Even today, there is a horse race call the Thousand Guineas, and racehorses are bought and sold in guineas.
Yeah, l remember my grandfather complained about it constantly. He called decimalization the "yanking" of the British Economy. He knew the old system very well and was extremely reluctant to change . Of course ,he also disliked central heating amongst many other things.
Don’t ask his opinions about polish people
Why did he not like central heating? Winter sucks.
@@jamesconnolly5164central heating turns men into wusses! 😤
@@jamesconnolly5164 "My childhood sucked and so should yours!"
Or something like that.
There's nothing more miserable than an ageing Pom.
I'm sure the Americans would be fine, they keep trying to convince us that 12 land leagues, 24 rods and 73 barleycorns is a perfectly understandable measurement of distance.
Make sure you grab a bushel of apples and send them a few fathoms deep
This is something that I find so amusing, the American seem to pride themselves on not using the metric system (decimal) since it's "not any more convenient" ........ whilst their ancestors made the first decimal currency explicitly because it's simpler to use (also, the reason the US didn't adopt the Metric System at the dawn of the XIXth century is the biggest plothole I have ever seen. What ? It would make you seem "too french" ? What does that even mean and why would the guys that wanted to distance themselves from the British would pass on this opportunity to stick it to Britain and reassure their distinct identity? Whoever wrote that should be fired, it's way too unbelievable)
@@sephikong8323 Better than the UK, where they use fricken metric and imperial system side by side. "Oh, yeh mate, just go down about three miles, turn right and a coupl'a hundred metres later an' bob's your uncle!"
@@sephikong8323 We honestly aren't that zealous about the imperial system, and we use the metric system in day to day life for a bunch of things alongside the imperial system. But no one is too enthusiastic about devoting the necessary resources and education to make the switch, and there isn't much pressure to do so since we're doing fine as it is.
@@jeremiahblake3949 I am mostly talking about the innumerable keyboard warriors that prop up in literally every video that talk about the Metric system (even sometimes randomly when the Metric system is used for measurement as well) to say that the Imperial system is just "objectively better and more intuitive" and defend it like their lives are on the line. I know that most people don't really care, but there's a legitimate portion of the American people that use the Imperial system as a form of pride and defend it as if it's Patriotic to do so
Canada went to a decimal system before it was even a country. In 1851 it was decided to switch to a decimal system and using the term dollar and cents to make commerce with the United States easier. Although Pounds Sterling were legal tender throughout the colonies, the transition to the decimal dollar system was in full use by Confederation in 1867.
Yes, the first decimal Canadian coins came out in 1858.
other then usa and uk world normally isnt like donkey stoborn and silly .
like imperial system
usa syill resist fee5t inc yaerrd bla blza ounce paund garabge systems
so im not so sure about canada i think becouse of so close to usa its moslty metric some still partly binded with usa
wgı jknow maybe usa resist this long becouse of 100 cent do 1 dollar when gain indepeted they stick with imperial system but on money changed
@@kazikokaziko4903 Canada is officially metric. Been that way since the 1970s, but because of the proximity of the U.S., remnants of the imperial system remain. For instance, people often still give their height in feet and inches , and weight in pounds, even though official documents (like a driver’s license) are given in metric. A lot of the trades like carpentry and home renovations still use imperial, even though metric would be obviously easier. Plus there are some really strange things like ovens calibrated in Fahrenheit, even though temperatures haven’t be broadcasted in Fahrenheit since the around early 1980s. People under 40 years old, generally will not understand imperial measures where imperial has disappeared (like road distances, speeds, and weather temperatures). It’s an interesting mix, and I think most Canadians don’t really think of it. But it does look a bit funny when compared to to a typical European or Asian country.
@@lukek1949 "People under 40 years old, generally will not understand imperial measures..."
Generally, yes, but they are quite handy with them if they work in hardware and fabric stores, etc.
@@lukek1949 Metric/Imperial can cause trouble if you're not careful. First time in the US I picked up a rental car and while driving on the freeway got the car to 100 and wondering why people were driving so slow. 100mph is a "bit" faster than 100kph
South Africa didn't get decimal currency until 1961, Australia until 1966 & New Zealand until 1967.
I worked in a pub in the sixties and was able to add up the most complicated and long orders in my head. I vaguely remember someone coming in to work on a Monday showing us his decimal coins, but then I emigrated. We still had coins dating from the Victorian era, I still have a penny where you can just read "1859".
kinda cool if its 1859, UK changed all copper coins in 1860, so an 1859 would actually be not legal tender, demonetized in 1869
I'm Canadian, and have a British farthing from 1918
Yeah like I want to drag the system but honestly as someone who's worked in meat markets enough to be able to convert pounds, ounces, and grams in my head with ease, I get how it's possible for people to be used to this system
That penny is worth a lot to coin collectors..
I've got a Swiss half Franc dated from 1881, which I got as change in a bakery around ten years back. That was quite a surprise. Meanwhile the oldest Euro coins are dated 1998, though that by itself is quite interesting, as that's two years before they even became a legal tender.
It's called the LSD system because you need to *be* on LSD to have any idea how it works.
L for pound, (livre in French) S for shilling, d for "dinaru" (Roman penny).
@@maggiemurphy5323 actually stood for, librae, solidi and denarii
@@maggiemurphy5323 Even more names O,O
Uh actually it stands for L (Lol) S (So how you guys doing? D (Deez coins )
Can confirm, did acid, now i know this and imperial are better
As an American boy, i learned the pound/shilling/pence system from the Annotated Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, which explained all the British slang & archaisms in the wide margins. I wish i still had it.
My god, I wish I was more well read, that is an awesome anecdote to drop. Also as an american boy, I am still staunchly against base-10 and metric, mostly for the same reasons the French complained about it back in the 1700's. For day to day human life, it is an awful way to do weights and measures, a base 12 system has more factors and would serve a far better purpose.
@@MatthewHolevinski rlly? care to elaborate y?
@@zephyr6927 if you aren't dealing with the astro or the nano on a day to day basis metric doesn't make any sense. I already said before based on factors alone imperial is a far quicker way when encountering day to day life. Fractionation of numbers is easy but I realize I'm saying that as an American.
@@MatthewHolevinski not actually familiar with Imperial, but I'll take a look
@@zephyr6927 find yourself an American carpenter or someone that has been in construction for a long time and you'll see some insane fast arithmetic.
@6:36 -- The 20p coin was not introduced until 1982, nine years after decimalisation. You still see these, such as the coin in the shot, because they minted so many.
In 1968, sets of replacement equivalent coins were minted. This is why the new 5p and new 10p maintained the sizes and weights of the shilling and two-bob they respectively replaced.
3:00 There *was* a coin called guinea worth 21 shillings between 1717 and 1816. (The coin also existed before 1717 but that's the year its value was legally fixed at 21 shillings).
Agreed, originally the Guinea had local values and varied across the country by a few pence.
I think it was also used during Stuart times, during Charles II's era.
@@parvchetri0995 Yes, but back then the value wasn't fixed at 21 shillings because pounds were made of silver whereas guinea was made of gold and the relative price of those metals affected the relative value of these coins.
@@seneca983 I see, I heard the story of Charles II fighting the London fire alongside fire fighters and he then rewarded the firefighters 100 guineas or so.
@@seneca983 : Yeah, the guinea was *intended* to be the same as a pound, but the fluctuating exchange rate between gold and silver messed that up.
I was an American child living in London in 1971 when the change happened but I learned the old system first. Apparently it's still lurking in the back of my mind because I was at a pub in Sheffield about 10 years ago that was having a problem with their cash tills and the waitress was trying to figure my lunch bill without one. I looked at her and said "oh-you owe me 7 pounds 6 shillings change from a £20 note.
She looked at me very oddly and I realized that she wouldn't have even been born in 1971-let alone dealt with £/s/d!
ahahahahhaha
@@GameyRaccoongem
I had a similar experience going back to the UK in 2019 after living in the US for 30 years. For some reason my brain could only remember the old pennies (even though I'd lived in England for 13 years with the new money), so I was confused when a cashier handed me some new pennies. I seriously thought they were ha'pennies. When I said so, she looked at me as if I was insane. She was maybe 25 years old.
@@kukifitte7357 Tranni
What's the d ? Is it dime
I love how you illustrated "the ancient times" of Great Britain with a picture of medieval Moscow 😁
I think, it was an "eastern egg", because Ukrainian and Russian currencies names have the exact same origin. In medieval Rus "hrivna" was a piece of silver that was cut to smaller pieces which were called "Ruble". Plus Russia was the very first country in the world which decimalaised its national currency
@@audiaudi873 the Papal States decimalised around 1500. So could be a tie.
@Σπυροσ Ντινος lmao
That's not Moscow. That's Novgorod, a mercantile city state destroyed by despotic Moscow.
@@yarovitek lol go back to school internet troll 🤪
Decimalisation ushered in a period of inflation which peaked a few years later. The reason was because 240 old pence now equalled 100 new pence, and prices were normally rounded up after decimalisation. We were left with a lot of prices like 2.5p and the tendency was to round them up to 3p, an increase in price of 20%. What you have to remember is that prices were far, far lower then so this rounding up really increased the cost of living of basic items and therefore inflation.
The people were definitely robbed. The government turn a shilling worth 12p into 5p decimal. You could get a dozen eggs for a shilling, but I doubt you get a dozen for 5p decimal.
I'm sure the rounding had an effect, however I doubt that was the only reason
In Australia when they decimalised, all of the coins went from silver and gold to more or less scrap metal. The only exception was the 50c piece which was still minted in silver for some time
When you have silver in circulation, there's a limit on how much money you can mint. When you take the silver away, you can mint with iron if you like. More coins on the market means coins are worth less, and therefore prices are higher
I imagine it was likely the same in the UK as in Australia
That's a myth. Inflation was caused by oil prices QUADRUPLING in a few months. Don't forget, Britain was based on manufacturing, so energy prices rising made all prices go up.
@@geoffauldfield4664 The quadrupling of the oil price came in 1974, 3 years after decimalisation. The inflation rate went up from 6.44% in 1970 to 9.44% in 1971, the year of decimalisation, an increase of %0% over 1970. That began a period of high inflation that was greatly exacerbated by the inflationary effects from quadrupling of oil prices on inflation rates in 1974 and 1975. To illustrate this, just compare the inflation rate in 1975 of over 24% in the Uk to 11.7% in France and 9.1% in Germany. Decimalisation helped to build inflation into the system before the oil price shock and the result was more inflation in the UK than our closest manufacturing competitors who were also equally hit by the oil price shock.
Considering that the entire world experienced inflation due to the oil crisis in the 1970s I don't think so.
Crowns were not generally minted, except as commemorative coins. However we did have the ten shilling note, which I don’t think was mentioned. I remember going into a newsagent on the day we went decimal: I bought my usual newspaper and handed over a pound - the lady behind the counter just thrust a handful of coins at me and said ‘Take whatever you want’.
Wasn't it replaced by the 10 bob bit (50p) in 1966?
Funny
@@evertonshorts937650p came in in 1969 I have a first issue at home
The wreath crown shown in this video is currently worth £200+
Scotland didn't have a ten shilling note
As children, my brother and I spent a short time with a very nice distant relative I had never met before. He disappeared for a minute and came back and smiled and shook our hands. As he did we could feel he was “secretly” passing each of us a half crown. This was a great gift for a child. It was a pleasantly big coin that you could buy something nice with (maybe chocolate, etc.) This left me with a very good impression of this man.
I am American, but always had a fondness for the old type of British coinage..
You were lucky, we tended to get a sixpence.
I still remember my godfather (a saint of a man, RIP Uncle David) giving me a TEN SHILLING note in my birthday card! I thought I could buy the whole of Woolworth's toy department! I couldn't, but I had a damn good try!
In Kenya we use the shilling as inherited from Great Britain(as they were then)but we simplified it. One Kenya shilling is equivalent to 100 cents.
And shillings are also called bob
@@hectorcot597 quit being pedantic, it is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and NI is irrelevant in the eyes of 99% of people
@hectorcot597 that's the case in English. Overall, this actually depends on the language spoken, so it's possible, that in their native language, the country is indeed called Great Britain and they just didn't know it's supposed to be called United Kingdom in English
@@Adiee5Priv
Britain ruled Kenya from 1897-1963 and we have tons of literature all in the name of Great Britain. The colonisers used UK and Britain synonymously. We know our history man😁
@@manasseskamau5327 sorry, I have no idea what's the native/official language of Kenya, nor do I know any history of it
I was born in 1956 and was brought up with the old system and never found it complicated at all, it is what you get use to and is only over complicated to people who have never used it.
When I was a kid my family traveled to London in 1970. Soon after we arrived my mother took me to Selfridge's to go shopping and we got on the Park Lane bus. My mother held out her hand to the conductor when, I think, he said the fare would be something like truppence haipny! She just held out her hand full of coins and said, "take whatever you want!"
Is that how the conductor became your step-father?
@@TokyoXtreme SHEEEESSHHHH
@@TokyoXtreme gottem
@@TokyoXtreme 🤣
The switchover to Decimal went remarkably smoothly, I was in supermarkets all day (all week in fact), there were no problems anywhere. In contrast, Imperial weights and measures are still with us, and it took several decades to stop using Fahrenheit temperatures.
In a way we still use the old systems in a strange an uniquly British hybrid. High temperatures are in F (close to 100), cold temperatures are in C (close to 0/freezing). Gold is still sold by the ounce (different to non-precious metal ounce), speed and distance on roads are in miles. Beer and milk sold in pints while fuel is sold by the litre but we still refer to economy in mpg (gallon!)
So when you go to a pub, do you order 0.473 litres of bitter?
A chemist goes to a bar and orders 473mL of H2O...
@@valmarsiglia That's an american pint, ours are 20 floz
@@KKmanmi Way to get the point, lol.
I was born in 1978 and grew up with the 1/2 penny still being in circulation. I used to regularly see 5p coins that still had “one shilling” on them.
The shilling was the same size as a 5p and the 2 shilling was the same size as the 10p for the longest time. The sixpence was also in circulation as 2.5p as a lot of people liked that coin.
@@racutis One of my favourite phrases in the English language is “tuppence ha’p’ny”. I just love the way it sounds.
@@MrOtistetrax we see that in the Mary Poppins song “Feed the Birds…tuppence (ie two pence) a bag.” We also see the actor playing the boy, Michael holding 2 Great Britain pennies (copper coins) from that time period!
The first time I came to Britain in the early 80s, halfpence coins under the new system were still around. We chatted to British lads in the hotel lobby and they actually parted with one of their halfpennies so I could take it back to Germany.
@@racutis I remember the 1 and 2 shillings being in circulation until the late '80s but didn't realise the sixpence was kept after decimalisation until 1980.
The 20p coin wasn't introduced until 1982, so 11 years after decimalisation.
Note on metric system - according to the regualtions, km & m are not authorised for road distance signs.
I asked my grandad what it was like and he had the most British response; he said
“It wasn’t that bad”
He still has a couple dozen old coins and he shows me them once every often and I find it very interesting how people lived back in the day
You sound like you're talking about early medieval England not just before
1970
@@Ana_crusisnah I am, it was a quite different world before 1971, my grandad has shown me old ha’pennies, pennies, thruppenny bits, silver sixpences, 1 and 2 shilling coins, and a couple of half crowns, he was born in 1941 so basically grew up with the old system, which yes, does sound medieval because that’s basically how old the system was!
@@Gilbertthetart
It wasn't "quite a different world" sugarplum. It was the same old world not very long ago.
it's a long-standing old system but nobody needs to talk about it as if they are talking about medieval history we only went decimal in England in 1970 I remember it very well I remember the old money it seems perfectly normal to me because I was born in 1956. Like everybody else I used it everyday.
You just think it sounds very old and strange to you because you didn't live with it
Farthings lasted to 1961. The Crown was very rare: I didn't see any until they started to issue them as collectors items after decimalisation. There were Guinea coins which were gold but they were antiques by the early years of the 20th Century. And you skipped the stage before the 100p=£1. There was a commission that wanted to halve the value of the base currency and make it equal to half a pound or ten shillings. A shilling would be worth 10p during the transition and tests showed people made fewer errors with the new currency if they tried it that way. But the decision came up during a Labour government and they didn't want the heart ache of the Tories saying that Labour had cut the value of the currency in half. (Yes, it's daft but it would likely have worked.)
Isn't that what the Australians did when they decimalised?
@@LeslieGilpinRailways Apparantly so! Thank you: I hadn't known that.
@@LeslieGilpinRailways : Yes, they did: The Australian Dollar was half of an Australian pound. They had done studies a few years before decimalization that found it was psychologically easier for shoppers to adjust to, e.g., a "6s 8d" price translating to "67c" instead of "33½p". (Prior to the high inflation of the 1970's, the shilling was the "main" currency unit for everyday purchases, and pounds only entered the picture for things like house and car payments.)
But in the UK, politicians and banking interests insisted on keeping the pound around.
And I've seen an Australian joke that the replacement of pounds with dollars was great "because suddenly I had twice as much money" ;-)
I think it was partially that the pound was (and still might be) the largest or 2nd largest reserve currency in the world, so you can't just change its value or demonetize old coins without massive upheaval in the world market. Australia and South Africa were nowhere near that powerful.
The 10 shilling note was an important part of the currency which you neglected to mention. It was replaced, after decimalisation, by the 50 pence piece.
I was going to say that, poor 10 bob note ignored
The 50p coin.Wow yes. I worked on the milk then and we used to call them "dustbin lids".
lovely brown note. felt rich when i got one on my birthday in a card from nan
@@insertnamehere5146 Yup. The "ten-bob note" or " half-a-bar" was a nice thing.
The 50p coin was introduced before 1971.
Thanks! I have long encountered those currency terms in books, TV, movies, etc. The first breakdown I ever encountered was in the book “Good Omens” back in the early 1990s which in one chapter broke it down. I still have my notes from the day I encountered that! This was great. I’ve been on a Wodehouse kick for the last year and these come up all the time.
Monty Python had a sketch ("New Brain from Currys") which used the old currency and there is an on-screen note "sketch written before decimalization". The episode was recorded in 1972 but not aired until early in 1973.
My German parents worked in Britain in the early 50s. Having to learn this and Imperial measurements at the same time drove them bonkers. Good video.
When you grew up with it, it wasn’t hard at all, you carried the combinations in your memory . (I’m 75). Everyone used it as second nature.
Everyone also had lead poisoning and many were addicted to degenerate shit like alcohol and tobacco
My father is 72 and never had a problem either. Heck, I learned it as a kid (I’m 26), it’s a nicer system for dividing IMO.
I used to get 2/6 for my spends every week, that amount bought me a great deal!
yeah it was just waaaaaay too complicated for digitazation lol
I am 63 and still remember like yesterday and still have a new and unused 10 bob note.
The British equivalent of the modern day American measuring system.
“It measures six hotdogs and a baconator”
four fifth of a baconator tops!
I think if you grew up with the system it would be easier to learn, it’s also funny the shilling has more buying power than the £0.05 pence
Are you kiddin' me thats like ten dicks long
And for a long time after, the shilling coin was still in circulation after decimalisation. Up until when the 5p coin was shrunk in 1990 you could find many old shillings still in use, they were still accepted mainly because the size was identical and thus vending machine accepted them as 5p.
And the florin too!
Traveling to the UK in 1991/1992 there were still a lot of pre-decimal coins in use. I brought back quite a variety of them.
That was true in Australia. We went decimal about 5 years earlier when I was 4, so I don’t remember using the old money, but I remember shillings and sixpence being used. The shilling was used as 10 cents and sixpence as 5 cents.
@@brontewcat As a reasonably old Brit, I never understood why a 5p was a sixpence neither!!!
Edit: Theres a comment below that mentions that a sixpence was worth 2 1/2p. Thank you (both of you) for making me feel young. Luckily, aged 3, I never had to worry about money pre-decimalisation.
The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.
You need to change that Gas guzzler, you should be getting 60 perches to the jeroboam!
Nice one, Grandpa.
What does that convert to in French fries per freedom eagle?
Yarp!
Genuinely don't know if this is a joke or some imperial abomination.
You missed the Ten Bob note.
The reason for "nineteen and eleven" was NOT to make things look cheaper. It was to force the assistant to open the til and give change.
Otherwise there was a risk that the sale would not get rung up and the pound would go into the assistant's pocket.
I never knew that.......
Correct. Nowadays tax inspectors and accountants apply an analytical algorithm to CAID (CAsh In Drawer) to check for fraud through the statistical distribution of digits by order of magnitude (I can't recall its name). It was much quicker then if you priced everything a penny below the value of a coin or note.
You didn't need a calculator, but before payment cards the bigger shops needed vaccuum tubes to deliver till clears to the Chief Cashier, and cash to the tills. Few people had bank accounts, so people were paid with cash (or a Postal Order that they could cash-in at a Post Office). On pay days, High Streets rang with the sound of trolleys of cash being pushed to and from the banks by the Cashiers' staff, guarded by ex-military Messengers, capped and in smart black and red uniforms. Smaller shops used Gladstone bags, chained to the Cashier or shop owner, but tradesmen might turn up atbthe bank with canvas coin-bags in a big biscuit-tin (no plastic bags then).
Weren't paying your cashiers enough, eh?
@@Dee_Just_Dee Still not.
@@Dee_Just_Dee Businesses were targetted for weaknesses, just as they are today. A friend of mine was in charge of the unit that tracked cashier fraud in one of our "big four" banks. He said that the underlying motivation was nearly always "fast women and slow horses".
I got a really nice car for a good price. The previous owner was a local solicitor who'd been dipping into client accounts. He cheated not only families out of their inheritances, but destroyed the career prospects of his colleagues because nearly all the firm's clients left.
NCP, when the biggest car park operator in the UK, was the victim of organised cashier theft. It was one of the biggest cases of theft by insiders in history. Another was at Blenheim Palace, when a family got control of their recruitment of cashiers.
Berni Inns was built on portion control to reduce theft by staff. In catering and cash businesses, staff can be under extreme pressure from family members to routinely steal from their employers anf customers - it's just another form of coercive control - and it's not small beer.
I notice that subtitles on TV sometimes get it wrong. A tanner (6d) is usually subtitled as tenner.(£10)
Honestly, the shilling is just such a good name, I wish it stayed
There are still a few countries in Africa that use shillings.
are you being genuine here? or are you just shilling for shilling? ;)
I have to agree. I don't know where the name is from and it never existed in France, but it sounds so good. Better than penny, which is a terrible and sounds like petty, I guess at least that describes their users.
@@hugolouessard3914 It's from shire= county + ling = derived from ie the coins were minted from silver from the King's appointed coiner.
Never used the word shilling ... only ever 'bob'
Canada introduced decimal currency in the 19th century (mainly to facilitate trade with the US). Australia decimalized in 1966 and New Zealand in 1967.
We also changed to the dollar away from the pound. Showing the changes towards the USA as well
We in South Africa saw the light in 1961, dropped the Pound for the Rand.
@@fuzzyhair321dollars are originally Spanish not American.
@@MikeMan-q4v what? so what? that wasn't my point
After playing Warhammer FRP for a year, I've become quite familiar with the old British system. It's not really that complicated all things considered. The main reason for what we now find weird was actually divisions. Since people did not have access to a convenient calculator back in the day, having a currency exchange with a large number of divisors was very convenient. You could have a farmer selling a box of eggs, but you needed only two out of 6. No problem, just divide the value by 3 (or 4, 5, 6 or 12) in your head. Our current system has only two divisors: 2 and 5.
Also, the decimal system still has coins/notes for 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 multiples of the basic units. You just give them names, and it's almost as complicated as the old system.
It really isn't as complicated as the old system though, since with decimal you can always condense it all down into a single, simple number.
@@voxelfusion9894 Well you could in the old system too, since everything could be broken down into pence (or half-pence) - one pound, two shillings and sixpence is 258 pence. The older system just seems complicated for us today, but for people who grew up with it, it was easy. And the OP is right, mathematically it's a much more flexible system. There's a reason that we divide our days into 24 hours, with 60 minutes per hour, each containing 60 seconds. It's the same reason that we have 360 degrees in a circle: just like with old money, it's more easily divisible.
How often do you actually need to divide currency, though? Adding and subtraction is much more common, and decimal is much more efficient for that task.
@@kalleguld When dividing things - let's say the grocer has a standard price for a dozen eggs, but you don't need a dozen. Well if you have a currency based on units of 12, you can split a dozen into one, two, three, four, and six. With decimal, that's less easy. Obviously we do this kind of thing less now, but it used to be much more common.
I should point out that although we've used a base-ten counting system for millennia, decimalisation of currency only began a few hundred years ago. Before that, other systems were used, many not dissimilar to l.s.d. Clearly all those different societies used those systems for a reason, it wasn't just to confuse people in the future. They created systems of currency which suited the needs of people at the time.
@@kalleguld When buying construction supplies for one. A pack of wood costs X, but you only need Y sheets from it. I agree it's not very common otherwise, but the need is there.
I'm from Kenya ( a former British colony) and our currency is based on this; we have the shilling as the basic unit, 100 cents make a shilling and 20 shillings make a pound. Interesting to learn the history of our currency system!
I wasn't born until after decimalisation, but still, I can see how you'd just be able to deal with it if that's the way it was. We count everything in base 10, but we use that counting system for our system of 60 seconds to a minutes, 60 minutes to an hour, 24 hours to a day. And 16 ounces to a pound, 14 pounds to a stone (used pretty much exclusively for bodyweight), but 20 fluid ounces to a pint. And buying fuel in litres but expressing fuel efficiency in miles per gallon. Buying spirits in 25ml or 35ml measures (instead of the old 1/6 or 1/5 of a gill), but beer and cider in pints. But wine in 125ml or 175ml glasses, from 750ml bottles. Bottled beer is in ml, so 330ml or 500ml usually, but sometimes 568ml so you get a pint. Wiring, hoses and pipes, nails and screws: in metres, centimetres and millimetres, but screws might well be in old imperial gauges too - it could be a 4mm or a #8, and it's probably labelled as both. It's probably badged as 25mm long, but it's also labelled as 1".
That 50mm x 100mm timber is going to be referred to as 2"x4", regardless of what it actually measures, and of course we all think of ourselves in feet and inches, so our clothes are sized with inches round the waist and chest, and down the inseam. But if you buy fabric for making clothes it's sold by the metre.
We spend our lives surrounded by a mish-mash of numerical conventions. £sd seems awkward, looking back, but did it seem unworkably complex when it was in use? No, not really. It was just the thing that you learned.
You've put it very clearly - it was what people had to deal with so they got on with it. It's the same with English spelling - throughout my life I've heard experts telling us that it needs to be simplified and it's too difficult for people. Whereas most people - even not very well-educated people did a good job of grasping correct spelling. There seem to be more semi-literate English people now than when I was a kid despite having a supposedly better and longer education.
Originally the pint wa 16 oz.. This why it is in the US it was after 1776 That brittain changesd its meeasuring sustem tpo e even more confusing. Originally weighs asand vcolumes were in powers of 2
And Boris (before he resigned) wanted to bring back imperial measurements to the nation! I know he's a barmpot anyway but it's a good thing he resigned when he did.
Tire size has them both in together. A tire of size 205 55 16 is 205mm across, and 16 inches inner diameter.
The imperial unit system is adequate for 18th century, but not for the 21st
It wasn't that bad considering that back then no everyday item costs more than may be 1 pound. For comparison a new car was about 600 pound and a years wage less than 1000 pound in the 1970s and even less in earlier years. So you basically only used pence and shillings.
@@kreuner11 Inflation's a bitch. Thats why,
@@kreuner11 Abandoning the Gold standard, endless money printing causing mass inflation and also governments pretending they can control economies consisting of millions of people.
@@ALEXANDER1318 you do realize the 1929 crash happened with the gold standard still in place, and also that there is not enough gold in our solar system to have the USD, let alone all other world currencies attach their value to that metal, right?
@@Blackgriffonphoenixg Depends on how much value you want to give the USD. Remember that in those days, most people payed with penny's or dimes, with dollars only being for large expenses. All the inflation of the past 80 or so years would need to be undone, bit that'd be fine.
@@Blackgriffonphoenixg you don't understand currency because you live in a world where money is paper that buys more paper than it's worth yet printing more is a life ruining crime.
Hilarious that there was a time that the US did things the most coherent way and many countries used them as a role model of standardization, that was very long ago. Now, I understand the Americans’ insistence of holding on to needlessly complicated systems because they feel the need to be SPECIAL! comes from.
There was such a time?
@@DaroriDerEinzige No
Except American use a dozenal base system which is better for basic everyday measurements than decimal.
But hey, I guess you must really enjoy a third of a kilometer being 333.3333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333… meters.
@@TheRealHelvetica and you must really love 0.2 being almost but not quite 51/256.
Base 12 is retarded. In everyday life you don't need the accuracy of that 4th decimal in 3.333 you complain about. and in anything where you do need numbers decimal is easier to calculate. There is zero downside to decimal.
@@mabamabam can you even name an imperial unit?
No because clearly you’re so uneducated you don’t even know that a foot is a third of a yard. 😏
Enjoy your inferior commie units europoor.
I remember in the early months of decimalisation when both sets of coins were in circulation,we were encouraged to “ give more and get change “. There was even a jingle sung by The Scaffold which I can still remember.
I very much enjoyeed this broadcast. I was 17 when Britain decimalised it's currency and had been taught both 'metric' and 'imperial' at school from infancy. In no way am I suggesting any return to pounds, shillings and pence but routinely adding and subtracting what now seems to be mind blowing sums in LSD was commonplace in my youth. Everyone could do it easily and quickly, even people who could not read and write. Decimalisation and the soon to follow invention of the pocket calculator have somehow robbed us all of a fiscal mental agility that was once commonplace. Just an observation
Certainly an interesting memory, though if I were to guess between those two factors which mattered the most... Then I figure it was the calculators really that reduced peoples mental agility at numbers and the decimal system probably not at all. After all there were plenty of countries using decimal number systems for far longer and I've certainly not heard of them having trouble calculating their money.
One can read of similar things in history really, like how there was a complaint in how writing was undermining the memory skill of people. I guess the truth here is, is that people will put less time in training something if they have an easier alternative and then use that time for other things.
Good observations, thank you
You're quite welcome.
I was born in 1955, and count myself bilingual in both coinage and units of measurement. What I am way, way better at than almost every young adult, let along kid is mental arithmetic and dealing with orders of magnitude. That's a legacy of using slide rules and log tables.
Also, I recall those working behind the bar had no problem totting up the cot of a round on the fly and working out the change. The really good ones could handle two rounds at once.
Also, that coins had nicknames added a little character to the currency. Now that has gone, then a bit of British social history and colour has now disappeared, replaced by the anodyne numbers. Even the Americans have retained nickels, dimes, quarters and, strangely, pennies.
I was born in 1978, so still had plenty of school teachers around who had taught both "old" and "new" money, we even had a few old textbooks with math sums in it using the old system. One of them challenged us to make change using old currency, and of course none of us could do it. She was able to do so without even thinking about it, as I'm sure anyone from her generation could, I also remember her saying that in her day they didn't learn their times tables up to 12, instead it was up to 20, which I'm sure made working with old money simpler. Like anything, it's what you're used to.
1964 - " Goldfinger " - Sean Connery and Gert Frobe. Wagering on their golf game at Stoke Poges :" ...shall we make it a shilling a hole ? "
When I was growing up in the 1960s, the 'three pence' coin was usually referred to as a 'threepenny bit' (pronounced 'threppenny'), though older people sometimes said 'thruppenny' or 'thruppence'. By then it was a twelve--sided brass coin, quite unlike any other British coin, though prior to 1946 it had been a much smaller conventionally shaped silver one.
Born in 1959 and grew up in London. I remember silver thrupenny bits. They were quite rare as far as I can remember at the time
@@alanmahoney167
I was born in 1957 and am pretty sure I never saw a silver threepence in circulation. The twelve-sided brass coins were manufactured from 1937 onwards, but they also continued to mint the silver ones until 1945.
In Australia, OUR
thruppenny bit
was silver coloured, and
EXTREMELY TINY.
The threpenny bit was my favourite coin of the era.
I have a few setting items which I require I make myself familiar with when I write any story:
- Hard Cultural Taboos
- Words that are non-existent in another language
- Travel time (how long it takes to get to different places in the setting, and what can be used)
- And Currency Understanding (Exchange rate, comparitve item value, how their currency works)
Only five minutes in, and you've basically blacklisted an entire era of a country.
Thanks.
Or use bitcoin, worth 100 million satoshis. Only the satoshi matters, accepted worldwide, no banks, no exchanges, ever again.
@@freeculture
What I said has nothing to do with modern currency exchange.
The only times I'v encountered the Guinea in my life, are in certain auction settings. A Guinea is £1.05, and those extra cents represents a 5% fee to the house. So if you win a rare coin for "2000 Guineas", you pay £2000 to the seller and an extra £100 to the house, for a total of £2100.
Pence*, not cents
I'd like to offer that Medical Doctors, Solicitors and Dentists would invoice in Guineas.
Also, I think that the gold sovereign was a guinea.
@@19gregske55 I think I heard that it was also used as a status symbol. Bespoke tailors and other high end shops would list their prices in Guineas. Buying something that was xx Guineas was automatically higher status than something priced in pounds.
Thoroughbred horses are valued in guineas still, I believe. You will see Britsh races classed as things like 20 guineas, trditionally.
TurtleMarcus- I'm English and recall saying to a GI in 1965 that my suit cost £10/10/-( Ten pounds tenshillings) or ten guineas- he hit the roof as he was of Italian extraction and thought that I was calling him a Guinea- apparently an insult- at least at the time.
The crown was generally a commemorative coin and wasn’t in general use. Would have been a 10/- note and a half crown??
Ten bob notes were indeed very common. I'm surprised they were missed out from the video. Even the Beatles sang about Mean Mr Mustard keeping a ten bob note up his nose!
Or 4 more half crowns
Not true, British Crowns circulated very heavily in the UK up until the early 20th century.
Yes, I never saw a crown in ciculation. Half crowns were substantial enough coins in size and weight to carry in your pocket.
1:28 the GAP was uncalled for. Well played
Fascinating. One minor correction... the sixpence was still valid currency post-decimalisation, it was worth 2.5p - until about 1980, when it was removed from circulation.
I don't remember decimalisation, but I do remember the sixpence when I was a child in the 70s. It never dawned on me to ask why it was call a 'six'-pence when it was only worth 2.5p :-)
Many were. The new nearest-equivalent are almost the same size, shape and weight. e.g. 5p (before 1990) and shilling, new 2p and old penny. Even the modern £1 is roughly the same size as the old Sovereign, which to this day has the nominal value of £1 (but being gold, has a much greater collectible and bullion valule).
In New Zealand, following decimalisation in 1967 it remained common to find an old shilling coin in your pocket change throughout the '70s and beyond, masquerading as a ten cent piece. Florins (20¢) were also quite common.
@@TillyOrifice Same here (UK). The old shilling was accepted as 10p until 1990 when the decimal 10p coin was changed to a different design, weight and size.
@@dcarbs2979 The shilling's decimal value was 5p not 10p. And the shilling/5p were the same coin so were intended to be used as 5p.
@@danwilliams75 But the 5p was half the size of the 10p. Yes, value-wise the shilling became 5p, having been 1/20th of a pre-decimal pound (12d). But coin-wise, the 10p was the shilling (I particularly remember it as I had 'magic' disappearing coin box made for the old shilling that fit the decimal 10p). The new 10p and old shilling (12d) are the same size. The difference did confuse me as a kid. It's only recently I found that a shilling was actually 12 pence rather than 5.
In the same way that the decimal 2p is the same as the old pre-decimal penny and the new penny as the old ha'penny. Decimal coins are roughly double the face value of their equivalent pre-decimal coin.
50p was not a direct replacement, as that would be the 10-shilling note. So the same is true: 50p is half a new pound, as 10 shilling is to the old. 20p is a brand new denomination introduced for the decimal era (1982). There is no pre-decimal 1/5th of a pound.
As someone who finds even the most basic of mental maths to be a challenge, I don't think I would have survived in pre-70s Britain, jeez.
If you'd grown up with this system, it wouldn't have been so hard
If you grow up with the system I think it would’ve been easy for you
They are playing Scott Joplins strenuous life to this. I think it would be strenuous learning this.
Yes you would. Kids practised these sums in school as part of their Maths lessons in junior school (age 7 - 11) and it became second nature. Most grown ups in the UK in those days left formal education at age 15, and got a job or an apprenticeship, the older ones had left at 14.If they could do it, you could have done it easily.
Maybe the reason why you have trouble with maths is because you grew up with decimal currency.
5:13 "this system is ridiculous" proceeds to show clip of coins being weighed to determine their total value.
Oh, I'm sorry, you didn't hear about that? The entire British coinage system neatly followed a rule of weights, so no matter how mixed up a bag of coins would be, the weight would always add up to a number corelating with the value. Many scales used to have markers to help with this activity.
Still ridiculous
The US used the same system, where the dime, quarter, half-dollar, and dollar coins each contained an amount of silver (or post-1965, copper/nickel alloy) proportional to their value.
Supermarkets still cash up by weighing the coins. Because I the wight of each coin is known, but it doesn’t signify anything.
@@elton1981 of course, you can do that anywhere, but can you weigh a bag with 30 quarters, 17 pennies and 12 dimes without having to sit down and sort them?
Sorry to bust your balls but this is still too fucking ridiculous.
Don't forget the ten bob note! Also crowns were rarely seen. When you used the system every day it wasn't too bad. I think the old system made people more numerate than they are now. Some young people even find it difficult using tens as well as where to put a decimal point.
As much as I love 240 (it’s a Highly Composite Number, it makes 3rds, 4ths, and even 16ths and 24ths whole integers as opposed to 100 which only makes 4ths, 5ths, 10ths, and 25ths nice), once everyone was using £s instead of shillings as their default it gets quite unwieldy
The number 240 still lives on in US nutrition labeling, with the standard "cup" being defined as 240 mL. (The traditional definition is 8 fluid ounces = 231/16 cubic inches, which works out to exactly 236.5882365 mL, but rounding it up to 240 is just so useful for fractions.)
This is why, as a pre-decimalisation child in Scotland, we did our times tables up to 16!
15 * 16 = 240
Now hear me out...
120 pennies in a pound, 24 pounds for a... I dunno, you guys will have to come up with a new name...
I grew up with this system and never had a problem. Still have a lot of the original coins.
They would be worth a few bob now... no pun intended.
and this was before inflation and we still had victorian coinage in use i had some old pennies so worn out could not make out vickys head
I remember learning times tables which had an extra column after the result for its conversion into shillings and pence. So instead of just reciting 10 10s is one hundred you would recite 10 10's is one hundred, eight and 4 pence.
Accounts books had columns for pounds shillings and pence and an extra margin for halfpence or farthings.
Decimal conversion meant grocers and money handlers have to have two cash registers and two sets of bags their coins. Shops took in the old coins and only handed out change in the new coins so that over a few weeks all the old coins were taken out of public circulation.
I recall that coins like 50p,20p,10p and 5p were introduced early as they had exact equivalents in the old currency, 10s,4s,2s and 1s respectively.The old half crown, 2/6 was got rid of some time earlier. Also got rid of was the old 1/2d coins.
Then on the 15th Feb 1971 the conversion to the new money was made with pricing being expressed in pounds and pence and 1p and 2p coins being brought into use to make up the set. The notes remained the same as the old notes until later.
Ireland, unlike the UK, made the much later change to the Euro in 2001 and we had a similar changeover, this time with the entire set of notes, coins having to be changed in one day.
It wasn't as diffcult to do as most transactions were being done by card, unlike the 1970's when everything was cash.
@@jgdooley2003 50p coin replaced the 10/- note, 10p coin the 2/- coin (or florin) and 5p coin the 1/-. The 20p coin wasn't until much later (its pre-decimal equivalent, a 4/- coin, was a brief unsuccessful experiment in the Victorian era).
I was a baby when they changed the money, but florins and shillings were still used as 10p and 5p pieces for many, many years, and so I grew up pretty familiar with them.
Yep - pre-decimal shillings and florins (ones after 1947, at any rate) were used until the 1990s.
Crowns weren't in circulation, as they were only special issues. We also had a ten shilling note. It wasn't that difficult, anyway. Old coins were accepted for several months after D-day, but change was always given in new money.
I resisted I’m still resisting. I called my children Bob, Florin and Penny. I wouldn’t change them for the world
It was no problem. For two farthings I could get a ha’penorth of broken biscuits. I could change three pennies for a thrupenny bit. Two of those made a tanner and two tanners made a bob. Up the scale was a two bob coin, and add a tanner to that and you got half a crown. I don’t remember a lot of crowns around in my day, but if you could get two you could change them for a brown ten bob note. Two ten bob notes got you a quid and then if you saved up a bit you could trade up for a fiver. Doctor’s fees were in Guineas, which were a quid with one bob added on. Copper coins were always bits but sliver coloured ones were pieces. Hence “bits and pieces”.
@stephenselby4252
I never knew about "bits and pieces" before. Thanks for that nugget.
But 2/6 was half a crown. or half a dollar. Doctors fees = you must be ancient if you paid these, they stopped in 1948 unless yyiu were rich and went rivate.
Everything I just read sounded like gibberish…
Yep he didn't live with it and commented how crap it was...it wasn't ...he's full of sh....t.
Not sure about the "bits and pieces" (in Scotland).
And yes you rarely say "Crowns". Towards the end of the old system - they tended to be struck as presentation coins. The last I am aware of was the 1965 "Churchill" commemorative.
There were no 20p coins in the UK until June 9th 1982 so some of your explaination is a few years out!
As a lad growing up in 1960's Britain I don't remember £sd being a problem to anyone. Using it came naturally.
A six pence piece was always a 'tanner', a shilling was always a 'bob'. Never used the term 'florin'; it was always a 'two bob bit'. The crown didn't exist in practice, but the half-crown did- it was considered a tidy sum if you had one in your pocket. It would make for a good night out in town! The guinea (21 shillings) was a term widely used to show prices in shops, but there was no actual guinea coin. There was also the ten shilling (ten bob) note, by the way- you really were able to have a right royal night out with one of those.
Naturally... after being exposed to it regularly nearly every day from childhood.
I assume you didn't have to do much accounting with large numbers of transactions. That must have really sucked before decimalisation.
Didn't we used to call the half crown " arf a dollar?"
Ha ha ... A fun little mockumentary!
Actually I didn't find the pre-decimal system remotely difficult, nor did I find the switchover difficult. The only thing we can't do with a pound of 100 pence is divide it into as many fractions as we used to be able to do with the 240 penny pound. For example a third of a pound was a nice round six and eight ... now it's 33.3333 recurring pence.
We still pack groceries in cartons of 6, 12 or 24. Before decimalisation it meant that we could convert from wholesale prices to retail unit prices extremely easily.
Nor can prices by increased by as little as one old penny ie 1/240th! The least a price can increase by today is 1p ie 1/100th, so a much bigger increase.
Indeed!!@@Lily_The_Pink972
No not really. 1p is worth much less than a penny in the 60s isn’t it
@@Lily_The_Pink972 In this day and age where a simple candy bar costs you nearly a pound, I think it's really trifling for anybody to complain about differences less than a decimal pence.
I remember when Ireland converted over from the Punt to Euros, there was a point in time where both prices were displayed, the government even sent out conversion calculators to every household.
They did the same in Belgium, still have that calculator somewhere I think and also a little "magical " card where the numbers change depending on how you are holding the card.
I’m an American who had a British grandmother that moved to the US in the 1950s. Back when I was a kid, my dad had the job of counting money from vending machines at the place he worked. When doing this at my grandmother’s house, she would always tell us how easy we had it counting the various coins and notes and we were never sure why. This video explains a lot
On my first day as a pupil in a corn merchant’s office, the manager handed me a weighbridge ticket 5 tons 2 cwt ( hundredweights) 3 qur ( quarters) 1 stone ( 14 lb - pounds weight) @ £24 12 shillings and 6d ( six pence). “ What does it come to, boy?” He asked. When I asked for a piece of paper to work it out .” Lord love you, lad. What have they been teaching you all these years at school.” Actually they used a book of tables called a Ready Reckoner for those sort of calculations . The changeover came at a time of inflation and certainly speeded it up for smaller items. It wasn’t long before an item which had cost 6d ( six old pence) was 6p (six new pence) or nearly one shilling and two pence halfpenny in “real” money.
240% inflation
@@roboftherock If you look at any other country which didn't switch their currency in the 70's you'll find that over that decade the prices increased by about a factor 2-4. Which is about a 10-15% per year inflation on average. Pound decimalisation didn't cause this and blaming greedy grocery stores etc. is just another deflection of blame by the money printers and bank lenders who lent money into existence (yes, this is how it works; the bank doesn't have the money it lends you, but debt spends just like money).
@@roboftherock *140% inflation
@@Anonymous-df8it I stand corrected. I'll put it down to a brain-glitch.
Yeah, pretty sure only the British measure weight in stones.
Fun fact: the guinea is still used in auctions today. The reason for that is that the price includes the fee for the auction house. A guinea is £1.05.
Example: you buy a painting for 3000 guineas it comes to 3150 pounds which is the price you pay to the auction house.
Except most auction houses these days charge 15% not 5%.
Funnily enough the really posh shop in my home city, Manchester Kendal Milne used to price it's stuff in guineas. As my dad pointed out, it was a way of over-charging the rich and stupid while making them feel superior .
It's almost like the difference between a gigabyte (1000) and a gibibyte (1024). It's basically the same number plus an overhead fee :P. Except this difference is used to undersell people products they dont realize have less technical capacity than they say they do in common parlance
Not the reason; there's an Article on Wikipedia which explains at length but briefly the value of gold grew faster than that of silver so the Guinea coin initially valued at £1 or 20 shillings varied, sometimes considerably. in 1717 is was formally set at 21 shillings and after the coin ceased to be struck in 1816 the Guinea remained as a unit of account.
The Coinage Act 1816 replaced the Guinea coin with the sovereign, back at 20/- and slightly smaller so the gold content was, at least initially, equal to the value of the silver in 20 shilling coins but it also redefined the value of the Pound Sterling in terms of gold instead of silver which meant that fluctuations in the value of silver no longer affected its trading value and that silver coinage of lower purity could be struck without debasing their value.
Prices in guineas were usual for expensive items before decimalization, such as luxury cars, racehorses, expensive rifles and shotguns, yachts, prizes at sporting events, art and expensive items at auctions, large amounts of land, rents and leases of properties in upper-class parts of cities, doctors' and other professionals' fees, tailored clothing and other things perceived as being "upper class". The abbreviation for an amount in guineas is a lower-case 'g'.
One of the advantages of the old system was that it could be divided so many ways. A pound could be evenly divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20, 30, 50, 60, and 80. This was probably a good thing in a time when many people had very little money and a few people had a lot of money. It made it possible to price a huge variety of goods in a way that was easy to calculate and pay.
That's the reason so many old systems used 12 or 60 for fractional units, those numbers have more ways to divide them then any number of similar size. That's why there are 12 inches to the foot and 12 troy ounces to the pound. And even in metric you still have 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. You can see the advantage of this system, if I have 1 hour to complete a test with 15 questions on it its trivial to figure out that means you have 4 minutes per question if you want to finish on time. Now compare that to trying to figure out how far 1/15 of a kilometer is without a calculator.
@@matthewroger6889 Why should I ever need to calculate 1/15 of a kilometer in my head?
@matthewroger6889 all good until you have to work out interest payments.
@matthewroger6889 I've seen that kind of argument before, the thing is there's no situation where you'd have to figure out 1/15th of a km. Tat kind of fraction is not used in metric - because, as you said, it would be wildly impractical. Even someone saying "1/4 of a km" instead of "250 meters" would sound weird
@@alanpeters874 wasn't charging interest seen as somewhat sinful for most of the middle ages? Might explain why that concern wasn't really accounted for in the old money system.
Now that is the best and most informative RUclips video I've seen in quite some time
Suddenly the money system in Harry Potter makes sense: it was a more extreme version of the UK of the past, thereby highlighting how wizarding society is bereft of magical technology.
I think you give too much to JK, think it was just a mix of old style and some whimsy.
If there were better divisions, I could see it, but hers is all odd numbered or indivisible.
It's so much worse than that - apparently "imperial" currency referes not to the old currency of the British Empire, but to the *Roman* empire, which we adopted. The Shilling is 5p, btw, because it is defined as 1 / 20th of a pound - 20p has nothing to do with it. If you go to other European countries, such as Spain, they'll have something similar; in Spain it was "veinte duros" (twenty shillings") to the, now defunct, *libra* (Roman pound).
The Portuguese pre-Euro coin was the escudo, a word derived from the Roman Latin scutum - shield. The Portuguese must have had big pockets.
20p does, indeed, have nothing to do with it, and the coin was not introduced until 1982.
Not true; ours was not the Roman system, though ‘d’ does stand for denarii and ‘L’ for Libra, it was introduced by king Offa in around 800AD. And Imperial System applies to units of measurement used in the British Empire, it was not used to refer to the currency.
I like that they didn’t change the Shilling to be 5 to a Pound. That way even with the Base 10 system, it remains 20 to a Pound. That’s nice.
if they truely wanted to go decimal it should be 10 to a pound like ther American dime .
in the Uk my family works in the equestrian (horses) industry, we still sometimes use guineas at auctions with one guinea being £1 and 5 pence, with the 5 pence being the commission to the auction house
Old 1/- and 2/- coins continued until just after the introduction of the 20p, and were used interchangeably with 5p and 10p coins until the latter were reduced in size (both events in the late '80s).
You missed the 10/- note replaced earlier (late '60s) with the large 50p - replaced with a smaller version in the early '90s.
Oh and the old 6d (Tanner) continued in use (21/2p) until the demise of the 1/2p.
In Scotland, it's still common to refer to 50p as, "Ten Bob."
Actually, the 1/- circulated as 5p until 31st December 1990 and the 2/- was in circulation until 30th June 1993. The reduced size 50p entered circulation on 1st September 1997.
i still call it a "ten bob bit"
and our local buses i shocked some older people when i say the fare is 50shilling because 50 shillimg could buy a weeks food shopping for our family
Ten bob note ceased as legal tender 20h November 1970
The ha'penny went in 84; the tanner went in 80.
I still have a collection of most of the old coins, except the sovereign, which I never had as I was just a child pre decimalisation.
And the video incorrectly assumed that the 20p coin was introduced at the same time as the new decimal coins, ie 15/2/1971. In fact it wasn’t introduced until the early 80s, around 1982, IIRC. I think that “Granny Gets The Point”, the information film shown repeatedly on TV during 1970/71, would’ve been improved if they’d pointed out the 1,2,5 pattern of the coins & notes. The ½p and lack of 20p threw out the system a bit, but essentially we have (or had), ½p, 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1, £2 (again not a thing in the 1970s), £5, £10, £20, £50. All numbers divisible by 10 or 100. As I said on this video a year ago, there were far more ways to equally divide up 240. The video is unfairly biased towards how complicated it was pre-20th century. In the 60s just before the change (forgive the pun) the number of coins was far more manageable and a bit more logical than the video makes out. The puzzle would’ve been far easier to solve if they’d included the 10 shilling note, and the £5 note in our options to choose from. It took me a few minutes to do the addition, but I did it, and got it right.
I was born in 1957 and I just about remember the Farthing (quarter penny) it went out of circulation in 1961. You very rarely saw a Crown coin. The one missing item from his list of coins and notes was the 10 bob note (10 shilling note).
Its beautiful there older users who still can share their stories.
I loved the 10 bob note. It was red (pink).
I found it quite neat to learn you needed 960 farthings to make 1 pound. Nearly 1000! Interestingly, the coins was about the same size as an American or Canadian 1 cent coin.
I was born in 1949 and used farthings as a child, but I have never seen a Crown in circulation. Half Crowns were common, but never Crowns.
Last year farthings were ever minted was 1955. In 1962, they were declared to no longer be legal tender. I have some farthings I found at coin stores in their foreign coin bargain bin. Last type ever made had a wren on the reverse and the "young head" portrait of Elizabeth II.
As one who grew up in the UK in the 1940s - 1950s I can say that no-one had any problems with the pre-decimal currency
We learnt the multiplication table up to 12X12 = 144
We used to have mental arithmetic exercises involving the total cost of items costing pounds and shillings per pound weight
Today most people can't get sums right even with a computer
By the way, the crown coin did not exist (or was not in regular use)
I never saw one. Perhaps it was only struck for commemorations
Complicated maybe but it served the UK well until 1971. Personally I would have kept it.
Interesting. You forgot the ten shilling note. Crowns were rarely used or seen. Some farthings were used into the late 1950s in sweet shops and stuff ( I remember seeing them ) but they weren't legal tender. I had quite a large collection of farthings.
So British people used illegal coins?
The Farthing was legal tender until 1st January 1961.
I learned about this in a footnote in a Terry Pratchett book, where the punchline was ""people resisted the decimal system because they thought it was too complicated".
I love the humor in these videos, even the titles make me laugh like an idiot.
JSKSHSJS I just read the title again and it killed me
Let's be real, the new pound is essentially the British Dollar, we're just too proud to admit it.
A couple of errors. The farthing was still around in the early sixties, but was very little seen. The crown had for many years been mainly issued as commemorative coin; it was legal tender, but rarely spent. There never was a 25p coin. The sixpence (known as a tanner, zack was an Australian term) was not withdrawn immediately due to public sentiment and was used as 2.5p coin. The half-crown was sometimes referred to as 'half-a-dollar'; card-schools continued to use the term half-a-dollar as a stake long after the half-crown had been withdrawn. One shilling and two shilling coins remained in circulation for a number of years as five and ten pence coins. You missed out the ten shilling note (which had been withdrawn around 1969) and was replaced by the seven sided fifty-pence coin. Only the 1d and 3d coins were pulled as quickly as possible due to the confusion that they caused.
Also, many of Britain's former colonies went decimal before Britain did. The Canadians followed America into decimalisation across the 1860s and 1870s, South Africa eventually followed suit in 1961, then Australia in 1966 and New Zealand in 1967.
Also, the 20p want introduced until the early 80's. I think he confused it with the 50p.
Before the arrival of the digital age this system actually made a lot of sense. I used it in England and Australia until Australia went decimal in 1966. I was taught to use £ -/ d in primary school and then within months dollars and cents. There was a reason why the UK and some of her territories kept the sterling system for so long, because almost everyone was happy with it !
@N Fels The British system evolved and there were numerous denominations were introduced and discontinued if they proved unpopular. It was not a conscious plan but purely trial and error (with the exception of the florin). I think that on the face of it most people unfamiliar with the British system would say what a mess! But I have been told that when mathematicians are first told of the system their faces light up! Ahhh! they say. The fact remains that people brought up with the system were generally satisfied with it and there was no great call from the public to introduce the decimal system. I have had first hand experience with the system so I know what I am talking about. I will say though that the digital age and inflation will have made the system somewhat redundant today. Though some have suggested that calculators could easily be adapted to the Sterling system if required.
Agreed,. We spent so much time in primary school learning stuff like 5 half crowns = 12/6 etc. etc. Turned out to be useless. However, things were much much cheaper then. A weekly wage might be as little as £20. So most things you buy were priced in shillings and pence. Bread 1/-, beer 2/6 a pint, bus fare 2d. Anything costing more than 7 or 8 shillings you would tend to pay for with a note (10/- or £1). Also supermarkets were new and smaller, so you tend to be spending small amounts in lots of different shops, butchers, bakers etc. Anything costing less than £5 would tend to be priced in shillings, eg 59/11 like a modern day £2.99. As a child I even had a money box that counted how much you saved. Only worked in shillings and pence. Presume they thought a child could not save as much as a pound.
The brief pause between the Pound and the Groat got me laughing pretty hard.
5:05 All that mental work kept the brits sharp for empire building clearly!
But not much else. Like cooking.
@@Anvilshock British cooking is pretty great, pre ww2.
@@DIEGhostfish It literally still is.
@@jimmoynahan9910 True, but rationing brought in a lot of dumb ideas that never quite went away.
In my time (growing up in the fifties and sixties) the Crown (five shillings, not ten) wasn't really used in commerce. It was only struck as a ceremonial, to commemorate Churchill on his death for instance, and it was b-i-g. Other problems with the predecimal coinage were that the coins were way too large; they pulled your coin-side trouser pocket half way down your butt. And there was no logic to the size of the various coins. You had to pull a handful out of your pocket and pick through to see what you'd got. Easier to hand over a pound or ten shilling note and receive even more oversized, useless coins in change.
lol. True
Money did go further prior to decimalisation when it started in 1968,so you didn't have to carry so much.
Even in the 🇺🇸 where our currency supposedly makes sense, the 5c piece is significantly larger than the 10c piece. Indeed the 10c piece is the smallest American coin.
@Steve L That actually makes sense! Thanks.
@@donatist59 American Coins used to be minted in silver, and would carry their weight in silver. If you have a pile of dimes, quarters, and halves you can calculate their value simply by weighing them.
There used to be a half dime coin that was exactly half the weight of a dime, but it was replaced by the nickel during the Civil War. Likewise, the old dollar coins were double the weight of the halves until they were replaced by the smaller Susan B Anthony dollars in 1979.
I'm a Canadian who , at 15 in 1966 found myself in a school in St Leonard's on Sea for about 3 months and I can tell you that though I had no problem learning the money in everyday life , math class and the computations necessary were difficult for someone who had grown up were all you had to do to change any math problem to finance was put a "$" in front of it.
That pause before you just.... kept naming more coins killed me omfg
The shilling and two shilling coins remained in common use alongside 5p's and 10p's (which they were the same size as) up until the early nineties when they replaced all the coins with smaller versions.
Also, the sixpence was allowed to stay in circulation (at an awkward value of 2.5p) until 1980.
Only the 5p, 10p and 50p changed in the 1990s. The others from D-Day (1p and 2p) stayed the same size, as did ones introduced since then (20p, £1).