Re: [CR]Making sense of old British prices

(Example: Production Builders:Teledyne)

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 09:06:30 -0500
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
From: "John Betmanis" <johnb@oxford.net>
Subject: Re: [CR]Making sense of old British prices
In-Reply-To: <B6220B98461A4D9BA2D16FF440CCF0E2@userjoi6ceot3g>


At 08:15 AM 28/11/2008 -0000, Paul Grosvenor wrote:
>A "quid" is a pound, or a nicker, £1.
>Half a dollar is 2/6, or half a crown, or in todays money 12 1/2p
>A "tanner" is 6d (sixpence) or in todays money 2 1/2p
>The pre 1971(14th February) pound had 240 pennies, or pence, or d. It
>had 20 shillings, or 20 bob. 12d made 1s (or 1/-). It sounds very
>complicated, and it probably was, but on 14th February 1971 we suddenly
>had to get our heads around 100newpence = £1.00, no more pennies,
>halfpennies, tanners, 2 bobs, half a crowns, threepenny bits - what a
>shock that was!
>Interestingly, I was in Kenya earlier this year where their currency is
>the Kenyan shilling - which they call the "bob"!
>And their 50 shilling coin is exactly the same as our 50p coin!

You've just about covered it, Paul. (Can't remember if anyone mentioned the florin, which was 2 shillings, a bit smaller than the half crown coin.) And just to keep this close to topic, let's not forget the farthing (as in the penny-farthing bicycle). The farthing was 1/4 of a penny, a copper coin just a little smaller than our penny. I think they were phased out in the fifties and I last remember the denonination being used in the price of bread. The old British penny was a copper coin about the size of our old silver dollar, so you can picture a penny-farthing bicycle.

John Betmanis
Woodstock, Ontario
Canada