http://finance.yahoo.com/m5?a=1&s=USD&t=GBP
One US dollar is worth .69 BP’s.
What can you buy with a pound?
I beg your pardon, one pound sterling is worth one pound sterling.
It’s the U.S. dollar that’s worth only .69 GBP. Thus, one pound is about USD 1.45.
And let me reflect the question back at you: what can you buy for a buck and a half?
Anyway, when I was in London last week, I could buy ten postcards for a pound from a street vender. And the service people such as the porters, maids, hat-check persons, etc were very happy with one pound tips.
It depends where you live in Britain. I can only speak for London, which is probably the most expensive place to live.
Some rough price guides: newspaper, around 45p. Chocolate bar, around 35p. Can of Coke, around 45p. Lottery ticket, £1 per set of numbers. Loaf of bread, about 50p - 80p depending on the type. First class stamp (I think), 31p.
For comparison (again, London prices don’t necessarily reflect anywhere else): pint of beer, around £2.20, paperback novel, around £6, new CD album, around £15.
10 postcards for $1 from street vendors here in NYC.
As a general rule, I reckon that the sterling price in the UK equals the dollar price in the US, so £10 will buy about the same in Britain as $10 in the US.
Of course, prices vary from one area to another.
What the heck are you talking about?
Isn’t that EXACTLY what I just posted?
???
Go post your own thread if you have questions:)
My sister-in-law is in England, and she forgot her credit cards. We are wiring her money, and I was trying to figure out how much she needed.
You seem a little touchy about such a cut and dried question.
Yeah, Freedom, I was a bit puzzled by C K’s response too. I thought that was exactly what you stated. Perhaps he just needs a little more sleep.
Tom’s suggestion is a pretty good ball park figure. England is a bit more expensive than the US. A pack of cigarettes’ll cost ya a bit over six bucks. But what you’d get for a dollar in the US probably will be around a pound in England.
My question is why are the pound exchange rates usually reversed in newspapers. What I mean is, all the rates are usually how many units of foreign currency a dollar will buy. But the British figure is invariably asterisked to a note that reads something like “figure reflects how many dollars a pound will buy.” Something like that, but more elegantly phrased.
Is it just that we don’t want to see a base currency of a foreign nation to be worth more than ours? (Not that this reflects the strength of a nations currency anyway.)
Yes, but for a pound you get ten postcards with views of London, which are naturally much prettier…
Flee, women and children first, use all exits 
Maybe because one pound is worth more than one dollar, whereas one dollar is usually worth more than the other major curency units. Or maybe a tradition thing as the UK financial markets are older than those of the US.
Freedom The 1$=1gbp thing really only applies to London, the C.O.L. drops quite dramatically the further from London you go, so it depends where your sis-in-law is located.
I’ll second that! A few years ago ('93?), a movie that cost £6 in London was only £2.35 in Cardiff, a day later. Same experience with restaurants, grocery stores and tourist traps^H^H^H^H^Hattractions.
My apologies for being curt. I was reading the question as a put-down of the UK, that the OP was suggesting that the pound wasn’t worth anything. I was also assuming that the OP was thinking the currency reverse, that the pound was worth less than the dollar: my point was that the pound is worth MORE than the dollar, not less. (It’s a common error with novices dealing with the currencies; as puly says, people expect the foreign currency unit to be less than the dollar, not more.)
I apologize for having read something into the OP that wasn’t intended to be there.
I’m still wondering, though, if the question was how much to send to your sister-in-law, why not ask that? And I’d respond what others have said already, figure the amount she’d need in dollars and send that amount in pounds – that is, one pound in London will buy about the same as one dollar in the U.S.
Would that be one metric pint? 
Actually, an Imperial pint is 20 oz, so a “short” pint in England is probably 17 or 18.
Intended?
Re-read the OP. Not only did I get the conversion correct, but there is no possible way you could interpret the OP as being anti-British.
There was a link to a currency converter, a simple statement of fact, and a neutral question.
That’s a pretty subjective question to ask. I just wanted the facts, and then I was going to make up my own mind.
Malta is another country where a dollar buys you less than a unitary unit of the local curreny.
Currently $1 = 0.44 Maltese Lira, although I have no idea at all what that buys you in Malta.
I paid £1.15 for a pint last sunday, about $1.67…and no tip required:), although I am so far north of London that flat caps and racing pigeons are compulsory;)
I’m in Manchester.
A N Other view
I live in tyhe north of England and I think the differences between here and London are not always so great. For things like CDs, beer, cans of coke etc, the generic good, where the companny sells worldwide or over a large area, the prices are pretty similar. Other things though, like cinema tickets, or meals in restaurants can be cheaper up here. As are things like rent.
What TomH posted is pretty much spot on, from my exprience. What costs $10 will cost £10, so when you factor in the exchange rate, it is more epxensive over here (which totally sucks, imho)
As for how much to send across, it depends on where your sister is and how much high living she is used to <g>
Hope that helps some.
Rick
The pound is thought to be overvalued relative to the dollar at the moment, meaning that a dollar will go further in the US than 69 pence will in Britain.
Every six months or so The Economist Magazine surveys the price of a single homogenous manufactured good across 30 or so countries to calculate the extent to which currencies or over- or under valued.
(The homogenous homogenous manufactured good in question happens to be a Big Mac. )
By that measure (FWIW, obviously) the British pound is about 18% overvalued: while a Big Mac costs about $2.55 in the US, it would cost $3 in Britain at current exchange rates (ok, as of 1/11/01).
Off of the subject here, is it proper to call the currency pound sterling? I thought it was not backed by anything but the good faith, .etc and was actually a worthless piece of paper, exactly like a greenback.