Musings on coinage

[enismirdal]

Today I found I had:
a 10 Swiss centimes piece
a Gibraltan penny

I then mentioned this and one of the girls in the lab gave me a 2 Pfennige piece.

There are a LOT of tourists in Cambridge at this time of year and I suppose it's only natural for some of them to mix up their small change. I would not be surprised if the Gibraltan penny was, in fact, legal tender here, since it's exactly the same size as a mainland British penny and has the Queen on it.

The 2 Pfennige is about 1mm less in diameter but the same thickness and naturally is not legal tender anywhere. The 10 centimes is about 1.5mm bigger in diameter than a UK 5p, maybe 0.3mm thinner, and doesn't have the wavy edges.

There, all you ever didn't want to know about 3 random coins.

I don't mind being given fun foreign coins in change if it's only a tiny amount. When I get something that's not legal tender where I was expecting a pound coin I am, of course, less impressed.

Comments

[larianelensar.livejournal.com]

Heh...I have some bills (kroner?) from the netherlands. Mine friend sent them before everything switched to the uh...Euro. (thank you tux for the mind jolt, I couldn't think of that for the life of me) Anyway, he always gave me such a hard time since american money is all the same color, theirs was very pretty. All different colors and stuff.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

For some reason, Irish people love finding the rare Vatican Euro coins. I bet they go down a treat with Ulster Protestants.

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I didn't know they existed (the coins; I knew the Irish existed!!). How incredibly cool! Now I want one too! :D

[mirien.livejournal.com]

I've popped in here under (sort of) false pretences, to ask about your music, as in the one on your post. Last time I asked this of you I ended up with a Nightwish obssesion, so this was probably a bad idea! *grins*

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

*checks what she was listening to at the time* Oh, Rivendell...they're OK. Heavy metal type stuff (not Tarja's pretty opera singing - a fair amount of extreme vocals, though more harmonic and tuneful than some similar stuff). I kind of like them, but it took them a while to grow on me. I say "them" - it's actually some German guy who writes and performs all of it himself.

The website is here (http://listen.to/rivendell). There's a couple of sample songs on their "News" page. Fall of Finrod IMHO is not actually one of his best, but the samples up there are good.

[mirien.livejournal.com]

Thanks Eni! I'm going to go poke the site again in a minute, my computer didn't want to play as regards downloading anything last night :(

[melime.livejournal.com]

I have a bunch of foreign coins. I don't have any UK ones, oddly enough, but my grandparents gave me a bunch from Morocco and some others from their travels. My favorites are the Canadian ones. They have the Queen on one side and usually some sort of animal on the other (although on their dime it's sailboats, and on the penny it's a maple leaf), which I think is lots more interesting than some old dude one one side and some monument on the other (although our new quarters are really interesting).

[senji.livejournal.com]

Gibraltarian (and Jersey and Guernsey) coins aren't legal tender (note, "legal tender" has a technical meaning) here, but in practice you'll probably be able to treat them as if they were money because people won't notice. If you have large sums of them then you'd expect to get about 70-90 pence for a £1 worth (although they can be exchanged one-for-one in the issuing country).

When visiting Gib it is important to ensure you get given UK notes rather than Gib ones :-).