Britain has a new £1 coin. It comes into circulation today and replaces the old coin, which was originally launched in 1983, making it one of the oldest coins still in circulation. The old coin gets phased out in October (and will no longer be legal tender) which means that, during the next six months, all of our slot machines and shopping trolleys get new payment slots.
Meanwhile, MasterCard sent me a nice infographic about it. It has a few interesting stats ...
- it’s estimated there are 30 million counterfeit £1 coins
- in 2017 the Royal Mint is producing 1.5 BILLION of the new £1 coins, equating to the weight of nearly 4,090 elephants
- a £1 coin left sitting in a piggy bank since 1983 would be worth just 32p now
- football fans could watch 34 minutes of a game for a pound in ‘83, but they’d only get three minutes of a match for the same money today.
... so I thought I would share it. Enjoy.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
