Check out the shiny new British coins

In My Humble Opinion
1

The Royal Mint has just unveiled the new designs for our money.

There’s a nice high-resolution slideshow of pics here.

I think the new coins are great. I was expecting them to have gone for some kind of horribly trendy and “relevant” set of designs, featuring , I dunno, Tesco supermarkets and hoodies or something, but these designs are classy. The Welsh aren’t happy, of course, as Wales isn’t featured on the Royal Shield, but they’ve had the Prince of Wales feathers on the 2p for 37 years now.

The only downside I can see is that there are no numerals on the coins to help non-English speakers, but then the USA doesn’t have them either.

(And, of course, the fact that there are still 1p and 2p coins in the new range, despite the fact that the penny is worth considerably less now than the 1/2p coin was when it was phased out nearly 25 years ago!)

What think the SDMB?

2

Too late to edit, but the 20p is my least favourite design - having a lion’s arse as the central feature seems a bit odd. :slight_smile:

3

We have to have them to get our change for all the things sold for £x.99. I s’pose they could have introduced a 99p coin.

I think they’re quite snazzy, though I don’t remember the last time I really looked at a coin. Googling on pound coins turns up at least two designs I’ve never noticed. I’ll have a closer look at my change at Waitrose tonight.

4

I like them! Particularly the way that you can assemble them together to make up the bigger picture.

I can’t believe the designer was only paid £35,000 though!

5

Is that a Tara harp?

6

North Wales sounds exciting.

7

Well, when he said “tabletop” he meant “chunk of slate”. :slight_smile:

8

Not really. We have .99 prices and rounding. It works fine.

The new coins look great. A good advertisement for design by prize rather than committee.

9

I can’t say that I care for the designs. They’re very “Look at me!”

But I’m not from the UK, so I don’t have to see them.

Joe

10

I sort of like it, but I think it would’ve been better if the coins were touching when you assembled them.
I guarantee that comedians on television, comics in magazines and tabloids, and guys trying to win bar bets will come up with ways to assemble the coins so that they produce images that are borderline obscene.
(“I’ll bet 25 pounds I can make a vajayjay out of the change in your pocket.”)

11

Well, that’s better than “Don’t look at this ugly thing.”

I like them. I wish they’d redesign our coins to something that looked this nice. I’m sick of presidents’ heads.

12

I really want to like them and in general I think it’s a neat idea, but in practice the designs are all so off-centered and incomplete and arrgg…I look at them and immediately am reminded of coins that have been stamped incorrectly and I can’t really get past that.

13

Of course, if we used the euro, one coin would be enough to make an obscene image.

14

I like them. The asymmetry appeals to me.

15

Interesting! I had not realised that they we being changed. I’m a long time coin collector and, having lived in England, the British coins hold a special interest for me.

16

I’ve been waiting with bated breath to see these - and I’m afraid I am desperately disappointed. They are absolutely hideous. Just the thing you’d expect from an 11 year-old (OK, so he’s 26 - but that’s bad enough). Sod the pretty pattern they make when you spread them out: who’s ever going to do that?? I give them 5 years before someone at the Royal Mint comes to their senses and quietly replaces them.

It would be interesting to see the designs that the design committee rejected. Sometimes the losers are far more interesting than the winners (like the designs by Publio Morbiducci for the Irish Free State coinage in 1927).

17

I think they look great. Finally somebody’s had the balls to do something radically different.

18

Hey hey hey! I don’t think his age had anything to do with it. Cuz I’m 26, and I could’ve done better. Who the heck thought that was a good idea? It’s just weird and pointless.

19

If you are referring to this, it wouldn’t be possible, because they’re all different sizes, even though in the picture it perhaps looks like the 10p and 2p are the same.

Edit: and FWIW, I like them a lot.

20

I also think it is a great idea, but not for a design that will last for decades. It’s fantastic for a special occasion (like the US bicentennial quarters), where you’d like them to have some unique property, but as normal coins, you can’t get over the fact that they look like crap individually.

Within a few weeks of their first circulation, everyone will be sick of arranging them in patterns on their desk, but they’ll still be stuck with funny-looking coins for the next 30 years.