Posted 11/04/2006 11:16 pm
I'm not sure of the local regulations where you are; here in Australia, ordinary banks will still accept predecimal currency as a deposit, paying the decimal equivalent into your account. Other countries (eg. much of the Eurozone) you have to take them in to the cantral bank offices.
For Predecimal British and Irish coins, you're probably better off dumping them on ebay or at your local coin dealer than going to the trouble of getting them exchanged at the central bank. Certainly for those huge pennies and halfpennies, they contain much more in scrap copper value than you'd get for face value. Inflation really has taken it's toll on the worth of old coinage!
As for predecimal-to-decimal exchange rates, the situations in Britain and Ireland were the same, as I understand it. Both countries kept the "pound" as the basic unit of currency; one predec pound = 1 decimal pound. The halfcrown would be 12½ decimal pence, florin (2 shillings) would be 10p, shilling 5p, sixpence 2½p, threepence 1¼p, so the predec penny would be 5/12ths of a decimal penny.
The situation in Ireland is complicated by the recent conversion to the euro. The Irish pound was locked in to a permanent exchange rate of 1.2697 euros to the pound, which is still in force, so simply multiply your face value by this number to get a value in euros. Thus, the old florin becomes about 13 eurocents.
For Predecimal British and Irish coins, you're probably better off dumping them on ebay or at your local coin dealer than going to the trouble of getting them exchanged at the central bank. Certainly for those huge pennies and halfpennies, they contain much more in scrap copper value than you'd get for face value. Inflation really has taken it's toll on the worth of old coinage!
As for predecimal-to-decimal exchange rates, the situations in Britain and Ireland were the same, as I understand it. Both countries kept the "pound" as the basic unit of currency; one predec pound = 1 decimal pound. The halfcrown would be 12½ decimal pence, florin (2 shillings) would be 10p, shilling 5p, sixpence 2½p, threepence 1¼p, so the predec penny would be 5/12ths of a decimal penny.
The situation in Ireland is complicated by the recent conversion to the euro. The Irish pound was locked in to a permanent exchange rate of 1.2697 euros to the pound, which is still in force, so simply multiply your face value by this number to get a value in euros. Thus, the old florin becomes about 13 eurocents.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
