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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 ]
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".
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".
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".
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.
Because the term "new penny" was defined in law, a change in the law would be needed for coins to keep up with common parlance. The Act changed the definition in the 1967 Act so that the denominations of money in the currency would be the "pound sterling and the penny or new penny", [3] with the word "New" being with the value of the coin (e.g.
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 ...
Only 2p and 3p denominations were produced. [2] With the setting up of the company "National Transport Tokens LTD" in 1972, the scheme began to expand to further areas, and when the name on the token no longer became geographically accurate, the tokens were changed to read "Public Transport Token". Again only 2p and 3p values were available.