I brought it home (to the US of A) from a trip to London about 7 years ago. If it is, how can I use it or turn it into dollars without racking up a bunch of fees?
If it’s one of the fairly old ones with George Stephenson on it, or one of the very old ones with the Duke of Wellington on it, then you won’t be able to spend it in the shops. You might be able to exchange it for the current issue at a bank or post office, and you’ll definitely be able to exchange it at the Bank of England itself in London.
This assumes you’re going to be visiting the UK again in the near future, of course. If not… I don’t think there’s very much you can do, unless you manage to find a foreign exchange place that will accept it. Commission will be very heavy on such a small amount, though.
Do you know anyone else who’s visiting the UK soon? Perhaps you could sell the note to that person at the current exchange rate and bypass the bank fees.
This is a very good suggestion, and one which I’ve used in the past. Both sides of the transaction benefit.
By the way, I assuming the OP realizes that the UK has retained their currency and does not use the Euro?
I am assuming …
Really, I can write English properly.
Quite right - and just to clarify, the current one features Elizabeth Fry. http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/current/index.htm
Is this true? Is old UK currency really no longer valid? In the USA, if I understand correctly, currency never “expires”; it is “valid for all debts, public and private” for as long as the US government exists to back it. This, of course, applies only to currency issued by the US Department of the Treasury. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing began issuing “United States Notes” in 1862. Prior to that (and perhaps later as well) individual states issued their own currency. This is no longer considered legal tender, nor is currency issued by the Confederacy during the Civil War. Of course, these notes are probably worth more than face value as collectibles anyway.
There is nothing that forces any private citizen or business from accepting any particular form of currency, but in my experience nobody cares how old it is as long as there’s a picture of a dead president on it. I have received Silver Certificates as change on a number of occasions; they have not been issued since 1953.
From the Bank of England website:
Are old Bank of England notes worthless?
No; all Bank of England notes whether legal tender or not retain their face value for all time. If your local bank, building society or Post Office is not willing to accept these notes then they can be exchanged at the Bank of England in London. Contact the Bank of England for details.
I believe the USA is a rare exception. Most other countres notes change on a regular basis (in particular to avoid counterfeiting) and it’s not a small cosmetic change. Your 50 [del]M[/del]oneyunits note is blue with the picture of the national academy of sex and arts on it for ten years, then it’s replaced by a pink one depicting a platypus in a grove of bamboos.
Generally, older notes can’t be used anymore after some years (but in practice dissapear very quickly, since banks send back the former notes to the central bank as soon as they get them). Depending on the country, older notes can still be exchanged at the central bank for a relatively long period of time, or forever.
The Bank of England will honour any note issued by the Bank of England … older designs, though, are generally not accepted in shops and suchlike.
Designs are changed fairly frequently - as others have said, it’s mostly an anti-counterfeiting measure. The UK authorities have been a bit sensitive on this score, ever since the Second World War, when the Nazis successfully copied the then-current design of the five pound note and launched an attempt to flood England with counterfeits.
(As a result of this, you may be asked questions designed to establish whether or not your note actually is a Bank of England note … if you turned up with a bundle of white fivers circa 1944 vintage, the questioning might get a bit rigorous.)
And in my opinion it is the stupidest policy we have. Think of all the crime that could be uncovered if we forced people with “expiring” hoards of illegally gained cash had to come forward in order to exchange it.
Changing/demonetizing doesn’t seem to hurt other countries.
England, of course, stopped printing one-pound notes years ago and the Bank of England notes were taken out of circulation. But Scottish banks continued to print their own notes.
So I have another question: Is my Scottish one pound note useable in England?
This very question is being discussed in another thread.
Usually. It’s not legal tender in England, so shops are entitled to refuse it. Any bank or post office will change it for you, and shops near the Scottish border or in major tourist areas (London, etc) will be used to dealing with them. However, I wouldn’t rely on it being accepted in a small shop or pub in a rural area, or by a bus driver.
Many shops won’t accept Scottish notes, no matter the amount - probably because if you’ve never seen them before, they could be mistaken for fakes. Plus, they aren’t technically legal tender, (IIRC), so that might throw people off down here. Of course, some shops will take them, but it’s better to exchange it for coins.
Of course, if it’s really old, it might be worth more to a collector than face value.
FWIW,
Rob
Very interesting! I vaguely recall hearing something about this before. Any links you can provide?
In the mid-80s there were rumors that the Iranians were printing U.S. Mint-quality $20 bills, using presses we sold the Shah. That, supposedly, is one of the reasons the Treasury decided to redesign U.S. currency.
This has been done in France just after WWII to find (or, more likely to ruin) war profiteers, people who had benefitted from black market, war criminals on the run, etc… People were given a very short period of time to exchange their notes (I believe something like some weeks) and they couldn’t be exchanged at all, anywhere, after this date (and still can’t).
However, I’m unconvinced that in more usual circumstances, such a move would help busting many criminals.
I just checked in a book published by the french central bank, and notes could be exchanged only during 12 days. They also mention that there are very few examples, worldwide, of such a drastic move (not simply the short delay, the fact that notes were demotized without possibility of exchange).
The US $ was, from what I gathered, reknowned as a currency very easy to counterfeit due to its “conservatism” and the lack of modern “anti-counterfeiting” techniques used in its printing. Add to that the fact that it circulates massively worldwide and I can see the point in redisigning it.
Canada has mostly completed a major redesign of its currency; the colours and the people on the fronts are the same, but the artwork is all-new, and the backs are completely different. (Last time the backs were all birds; this time it’s maps and satellites and hockey players and activists and veterans and poems and Haida art and all sorts of things. 
) They also added other security features, like puzzle numbers and watermarks and holograms and woven-in stripes.
The old notes are still valid. I believe there is a policy at the banks of taking in the old ones and shredding them, replacing them with new. Old ones and twos were long ago replaced by coins, and are now collector’s items. Old fives and tens are very rare. I still get old twenties about 30% of the time at money machines, but these are becoming rarer. I don’t use fifties and hundreds often enough to get a sense of how common the new ones are compared to the old.