Pounds, shillings, and pence: a history of English coinage

So would you support us moving to a base 12 numeral system then?

I loved this video. I am Irish & my grandmother somehow manage to give the old LSD names to eurocent coins. She also complained she had to change money twice in her life

I remember seeing a dress priced in guineas in the C&A shop in the mid 1960s! I remember it as I had no idea what a guinea was, though it is dividable by 3!

Brilliant video, Lindybeige!
I sat down with my dad one evening and mapped out all of the conversions of shillings, bobs, thrpny bits, crowns etc and it probably too more than an hour!

Quinea - 21 Shillings
Sovereign - 20 Shillings
Mark - 160p
Noble - 80p
Angel - 80p
Crown - 5 Shillings
Florin - 2 Shillings
Shilling - 12p
Testoon - 12p
Sixpence / Tanner - 6p
Groat - 4p
Threepence - 3p
Tuppence - 2p
Ha’penny / Obol - 1/2p
Farthing - 1/4p

nonsense re the EU and 1/2 litre rather than pints. They were tollerant of English foibles to a fault

note to americans we DO NOT use the old system we have not used it since 1971

i love how you places the invisible coin on an invisible table in the intro.

Es fácil de forjar usando molde y ácido.

...and the "yeurgh" as used in Europe.

As someone who only recently started collecting coins and other numismatics. This video had my fullest attention from start to finish. Another excellent content by Lindybeige !!

Who was shaving the edges of coins off?

.a bunch of things here. I do like the British monetary and engineering systems (can divide by 2,3, 4 ). But, it has problems when dealing with higher powers (n^x). Nonetheless, when i went to the markets in Poland and asked for a 'pfund' of cheese, I'd get 500g of cheese.
BTW I'm still mystified about nail weight in the US

You forgot 4 as a divisor of 100.

Love your content! Keep up the great work!
By the way, the trick with annoying coins worked!
As a Dane with my Crowns and my "Ears" i hate going to the UK and Filling my pockets and have to carry around all your coins.

And yes! We have the Danish crown, 1. 2. 5. 10. 20.
Then we have half a crown, called an "ear" 0.25 and 0.50.
1 Pund is 8.6 Crowns.

The $ was originally an U with a S on top....United States

I would argue that in a system where the real value of one penny is so low, having 100 per pound is actually not a major detriment. I think of the cost of something as the nearest number of pounds, so dividing up the cost of something is just a matter of how convenient that number of pounds is to divide. I think nothing of giving someone £24 instead of £23.67.

Wait a sec, if electrum is worth 10 silver, and a gold is worth 20, then 2 electrum are worth 1 gold....

A straightforward system with four farthings to the penny, twelve pennies to the shilling, twenty shillings to the pound and twenty one shillings to the guinea.

and btw, here, in Russia we buy eggs 6 or 10 :))

странно, я, живя в Москве, сморю видео про историю англиской валюты!

Lindybeige would be amazing on "Just a minute".

Love the soft cover Player's Handbook. It looks well loved.

that edge trimming is where we get the term chiseler, a synonym for a swindler or a embezzler. they literally shaved the edges of coins with a sharp chisel.

I live in Eastern/South Eastern Kansas. In fact, I went to high school in Osawatomie, KS. The Home of the Civil War character John Brown. I know live about an hour south of there now in a small 1820-40s town. Our house was built in the 1880s or a bit before. I am a hobbyist metal detector, and after research, I found that my small town was the spot of a union camp site. As I was metal detecting in my neighbors yard, I found an 1861 Seated Liberty Silver Quarter. Due to the history of the town and the other civil war, Era relics found alongside the coin. It's reasonable to conclude that the quarter has actually been buried since the 1860s. A typical 1861 quarter is worth about 100 usd. After more in-depth research, I found that it is an extremely rare variant worth a few thousand usd or more.

Last I checked, in the US a cow could be valued between $900 and $3000 depending on genetics.

In Germany the eggs are selled in 5, 10, 20... barbarians!

This video makes me want to start again to L:s:d

Now we don’t even have a 50 pound note we only have the 20 10 5

For the longest time, I thought the reason old coins were oddly shaped was simply because they were manufactured that way due to technological limitations of the time.

Also, I first heard about the "guinea" unit from Muppet Treasure Island, where the opening number mentions that pirates would fight each other "for a bag of guineas or a piece of eight". However, it wasn't until I saw Gilbert & Sullivan's Patience that I found out it was specifically an English/British unit of money, where local ladies' man Bunthorne holds a raffle and charges half a guinea per ticket. So that would be 10 shillings sixpence, or £82.45 (102.52 USD) in today's money.

Mark A. Flynn in his book "the Labyrinth" describes how the American $ sign comes from the Spanish dollar sign, which has two lines, and it stands for the two trees in the garden of Eden with the snake in it. And that the symbol came from the idea that after the fall, we all have to work for our money. I don't know if that's true, but always thought it made a lot of sense.

...sorry Northern Ireland..
No?...

20 silver to 1 gold, means that if 10 silver equal 1 electrum, then, yes, 2 electrum equal 1 gold of same size. Garry got it right. You confused yourself again.

I've never had an inclination to play D&D but for some reason i think ot would be really enjoyable to play with Nik 😁

Were the counterfitters hung at Leeds?
( I dont know , somthing i remember from Monty Python😊)

The decimal system is better cause it works better for Trade in a World economy.

I'm not a numistatist but.....

We sell eggs in multiples of 12 and 24 here in the states cuz everything's gotta be bigger in texas

I think it was a great system back when those coins were the money everyone used
I don't think it would be sensible going back to it now with online transactions and what not, Lloyd pointed it out already saying "20 pound notes are what people use" Physical money is just not as important anymore although we all love it

In defence of the Guinea. In Mapp and Lucia there is a storyline where Lucia is negotiating to buy a house from Mapp which she doesn't really want, but needs, to sell. An offer is made which she doesn't want to accept. It is upped to guineas rather than pounds and she accepts. In a negotiation, changing an offer of pounds gives an automatic 5% increase without changing the number, thereby saving face to a degree, which can be useful.

Am glad i grew my portfolio from 17k to 100k last month inside my wallet without sending a dime to anyone through the help of Mrs Charlotte margit

If I may use Lloyd's logic against him for a moment… a guinea, being 21 shillings, is 252d, a figure divisible by both 7 and 9 and thus clearly useful in commerce ;)

After all, if something costs a guinea a stone, then each pound is 1/6. Makes perfect sense 😅

You are correct, it was indeed a flipping good system of Currency, vastly superior to the Decimal nonsense. I wish we could bring it back into style — and I say that even though I'm American, and we never had it to begin with. However, in our defense, we did at least have the sense to keep our Weights and Distances in traditional units.

you could hardly do better............ francly

Great video 👍

So 2 electrum to a gold is correct? Cause 1 electrum is 10 silver