anybody know…

[gbb]

Now we start reminiscing...
I remember in the late 60s, a mars bar was 6d (thats 2.5 pence isnt it ?)
A bag of chips was the same.

Equate that to todays prices...a mars bar, maybe 40p...and a bag of chips £1.10 How did that happen ???

And while we're on the subject, although not pre decimal prices, in 1977 a gallon of petrol was 47p......47p

 

[wafflycat]

Anyone remember The Scaffold doing all the songs on the TV's public information slots in the lead-up the the change over from old money to new money? I do...

 

[TheDoctor]

Sorry, Waffles, I don't. I hadn't even started school then.

 

[gavintc]

This takes me back. I remember the transfer very well.

 

[Speicher]

Sorry, Waffles, I don't. I hadn't even started school then.

Well, you should have got up earlier.

Wot?

 

[Aperitif]

I used to buy The Hotspur, The Hornet, The Victor and the Valiant - from Fred, the pipe smoking proprietor of 'A.V. Apps'. That took care of 1/10d of my two bob pocket money. (I hated Radio Fun - but I would love to see Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warris as our heroes today!)

 

[661-Pete]

I liked the old threepenny bits (not just the rhyming slang )!

12 edges:

There were older threepenny bits than that! I can still (just!) remember the old silver 3d - though never in my own possession: my Mum used to have the odd one in her purse. This would have been back in the 1950s: they had stopped making them but there were still a fair number in circulation. I think shopkeepers shied away from giving these tiny coins in change to small kids, as they were very easy to lose! So in my pocket it was always the later brass variety (when I was rich enough to have one).

The plural of 'penny' was always 'pence' when referring to a sum of money: e.g. "that costs fivepence". But 'pennies' when you were referring to the coins themselves: for instance "put four pennies in the slot".

Sixpence was a 'tanner' and a shilling a 'bob'. 'Florin' for two bob was falling out of use in my time, but 'half-a-crown' was still commonplace. Again, that meant the amount of money: when talking of the coin you said 'a half-crown'.

 

[swee'pea99]

Pounds, shillings and pence. Not 'pennies'.

'Penny' only for 'a penny'. Otherwise 'pense', rhymes with the second syllable of 'Lawrence' (and nothing else I can think of), as in

Tuppense
Thrupense
Fourpense

Also, 'haypnee', as in 'tuppense haypnee'.

Great coins!

The thrupnee bit - as pictured earlier in the thread - like no other coin you've ever seen a solid wee slug of a coin
The tanner - a sixpenny piece - something akin to a modern 5p: very small, very delicate
A two-bob - you sometimes came across old ones that actually said 'florin' on them. You seldome found pre-1920 ones, cos before then they'd been made of real silver.
Best of all, the half-crown: a 'two-and-six'. Big and heavy. When you had a half-crown in your sweaty little palm, you knew you had Money.

Victorian pennies were still quite common. Every now and then you'd even come across a 'bun' - tho' always very smooth, all detail long since worn away by a million fingers & thumbs...is that 1847? 1842? - one from her early reign....1840s/50s sort of era. Rummage around in a pocket full of pennies and your hands came out smelling of metal...

Jumpers for goalposts, eh?

 

[661-Pete]

[quote name='swee'pea99']Victorian pennies were still quite common. Every now and then you'd even come across a 'bun' - tho' always very smooth, all detail long since worn away by a million fingers & thumbs...is that 1847? 1842? - one from her early reign....1840s/50s sort of era. Rummage around in a pocket full of pennies and your hands came out smelling of metal...
[/QUOTE]For those who don't quite follow this, a 'bun' meant a penny with Queen Vic's head with her hair tied up in a bun, like this. You'd have been very lucky to find one in that condition, even in the 1950s! They actually dated from 1860 (first issue) to about 1894: after that they replaced it with the 'old head' of an older QV wearing a sort of veil. I did try to collect a complete set of all years when I was a kid, but there were many 'gap' years.

 

[swee'pea99]

Like this. They were rare - once or twice a year sort of thing - but you did come across them. I'm talking the '60s here...

 

[Cubist]

the groat. But that was a long time before.

I think the 'd' for pence comes from the Latin denarius

A groat was fourpence, but like you say had fallen by the wayside. It was mirrored in contemporary Germany by the coin the "Groschen", which I seem to remember was the slang term for a 10 pfennig piece (10/100th of a Deutschmark). A Groschen was also an Austrian penny (1/100 of a Austrian Schilling.)

Bertholt Brecht's "Die Dreigroschenoper" is translated as the Threepenny Opera, so loses a bit in translation. Unless you're Austrian.

 

[Fnaar]

Anyone remember The Scaffold doing all the songs on the TV's public information slots in the lead-up the the change over from old money to new money? I do...

Oh yes, I remember them... and thanks to the interweb, we can re-live those moments

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrUlW_CohoY


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMMydtcswTU&NR=1


I also remember jingle (the Scaffold, as you say, prob'ly??) which went "decimalisation, decimalise...decimalisation will change your life.." and a whole series of 'weights and measures' PIFs with things like "two and a quarter pounds of jam, weigh about a kilogramme".

 

[swee'pea99]

"A litre of water's a pint and three quarters."

 

[Fnaar]

[quote name='swee'pea99']"A litre of water's a pint and three quarters."[/QUOTE]
Them's the ones... red peppers, green peppers, juicy green beans etc

 

[bonj2]

what was pre-decimal coinage known as, pre decimal coinage?

just "coins", because it wasn't known then that decimal was going to be invented.
Just the same as in the year 100BC, it wasn't known as 100BC, because they didn't know when "0" was going to be.