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The British decimal two pence coin (often shortened to 2p in writing and speech) is a denomination of sterling coinage equalling 2 ⁄ 100 of a pound. Since the coin's introduction on 15 February 1971, the year British currency was decimalised , its obverse has featured four profiles of Queen Elizabeth II . [ 1 ]
As it was a requirement that a coin's face value should correspond to the value of the base metal, each was made from two pence worth of copper (2 ounces), making the coins significantly larger than earlier pennies which had been struck in silver. Their large size, combined with the thick rim, led to the nickname "cartwheels".
The introduction of decimal currency caused a new casual usage to emerge, where any value in pence is spoken using the suffix pee: e.g. "twenty-three pee" or, in the early years, "two-and-a-half pee" rather than the previous "tuppence-ha'penny". Amounts over a pound are normally spoken thus: "five pounds forty".
The old shilling equated to five (new) pence, and, for example, £2 10s 6d became £2.52 + 1 / 2 . The symbol for the (old) penny, "d", was replaced by "p" (or initially sometimes "np", for new pence). Thus 72 pence can be written as £0.72 or 72p; both were commonly read as "seventy-two pee".
Each new penny was worth 2.4 old pence ("d."). A coin of half a new penny, a halfpenny, was introduced to maintain the approximate granularity of the old penny, but was dropped in 1984 as inflation reduced its value. An old value of 7 pounds, 10 shillings, and sixpence, abbreviated £7-10-6 or £7:10s:6d. became £7.52 1 / 2 p. Amounts ...
2014: A petrol station owner found a silver two pence in a new packet of coins minted in 1988. The coin sold for £1,200 at the Charterhouse Auction house in Sherborne. [3] 2015: A 1971 silver two pence was found in the donation box for unwanted foreign currency at a hospital in Reading. [3] 2016: A silver two pence was found in a Poppy Appeal tin.
The penny is the lowest value coin (in real terms) ever to circulate in the United Kingdom. [3] The penny was originally minted from bronze, but since 1992 has been minted in copper-plated steel due to increasing copper prices. There are an estimated 10.5 billion 1p coins in circulation as of 2016, with a total face value of around £105,000,000.
In 1971, a new penny would have been worth 9.6 farthings (making a farthing slightly more than 0.1 new pence). Similarly, the old halfpenny and the half-crown were not converted [clarification needed] in the UK either, [citation needed] having been withdrawn in the run-up to decimalisation, although the half-crown was worth exactly 12 1/2 new ...