How much was 30 bob? Making sense of our old money, 50 years after Decimal Day

The generation gap of half a century ago was never demonstrated more clearly than by the Pathé newsreel cameraman who asked members of the public when they thought D-Day was.
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Those over 40 instinctively reeled off the date of the Normandy landings, 27 years earlier. To everyone else it was February 15 1971, the day on which half crowns, florins and ha’pences were swept away in a gold rush of pounds and new pence.

Decimal Day, as Edward Heath’s government called it, was a watershed in the cultural life of the country, as an entire lexicon of old money – tanners, ten-bob notes and thrupenny bits – was wiped off the slate. The older you were, concluded Pathé News, the harder it was to get your head around it.

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Exactly 50 years later, it is the arcane pre-decimal system that is the harder to comprehend.

Monday February 15, 1971 Decimalisation Day... Shoppers at a Marks and Spencer store try to get their heads around the new pricesMonday February 15, 1971 Decimalisation Day... Shoppers at a Marks and Spencer store try to get their heads around the new prices
Monday February 15, 1971 Decimalisation Day... Shoppers at a Marks and Spencer store try to get their heads around the new prices

The official three tiers of currency – 20 shillings to the pound, 12 pence to a shilling – were compounded by the general practice among shops of labelling goods in guineas or shillings alone to make them look cheaper. A price tag of 39s 11d was only just short of £2, while “£59 gns” meant £59 and another 59 shillings – making nearly £62 in all.

“Those numbers won’t mean anything to kids today,” said Charles Snowden, who runs an antique coin collecting business in Pickering. “You’d need a calculator to work out what 33/9 meant, but of course they hadn’t been invented.”

It was the pennies that were the most confusing aspect of the “old money”, he said. “They were a 12th of a shilling, which was hard to get your head around, and they were split into ha’pennies and until the 1950s into farthings.

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“Going further back, you had to actually cut a penny in half or in quarters along the cross that was stamped on it. It really is a lot easier today.”

Jo Fletcher-Lee, commercial director at Tennants Auctioneers in Leyburn with a George V, 1911 Coronation 10-coin setJo Fletcher-Lee, commercial director at Tennants Auctioneers in Leyburn with a George V, 1911 Coronation 10-coin set
Jo Fletcher-Lee, commercial director at Tennants Auctioneers in Leyburn with a George V, 1911 Coronation 10-coin set

Mr Snowden, now in his 70s, began collecting coins at 12, and said the changeover of 1971 sparked a new wave of interest, as people began to stash away their small change before it became obsolete.

“That was when most collectors and dealers started up,” he said. “There are enough old coins in people’s homes to fill 1,000 trucks.”

Dominique Evans at the Royal Mint added: “Even though people understood the reason for Decimal Day, they had and still have a fondness for the pre-decimal coins. They can still be found in random jumbles in boxes and drawers.”

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The holy grail among numismatists is the 1933 penny, only around six of which were minted. The last one to be auctioned, five years ago, raised £72,000.

The coins going under the hammer at Tennants in Leyburn on Wednesday – some of which are expected to fetch up to £3,000 – also point to the enduring popularity of the old currency. They include a set of 10 minted for the coronation of George V in 1911, with a half-sovereign and a 4d “maundy groat” among their number.

Many in 1971 believed shops were using decimalisation to disguise price increases by rounding up old pennies to the nearest whole “new pee”.

A 6d packet of crisps should have been exactly 2½p but soon became 3p. A one-shilling pint of milk from the local roundsman was more easily converted to 5p.

A pint of beer in 1971 cost just three shillings or 15p, but the average weekly wage for an adult male in a manual job was only £30 19s 10d.

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