Tomorrow it will be sixty years since we began the phase out of the Pounds, Shillings, and Pence.

Does anyone have any photos of price labels that showed the price in old and new currency, that was used for a while?

Remember Dollar Bill?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm_Vtl2u1Hc

There was a period during which prices could be shown legally in both currencies, and used car dealers made the most of it.

A small yard near my home at the time painted the pounds amount on the windscreens in very large size numerals and the dollar equivalents (i.e. twice the other number) in fine print below it.

I was a primary school student when the change happened. I remember when our neighbour showed us a 2 cent coin and a $2 note. The 50 cent coins were round, rather than 12-sided like now. And the $5 note wasn't in the original changeover, it came later. The largest note was $20. And, of course, the notes were all paper, rather than today's plastic.

One strange thing is although I can remember various pre-decimal coins, I cannot recall any of the notes. Maybe we were too poor to have any.

One strange thing is although I can remember various pre-decimal coins, I cannot recall any of the notes. Maybe we were too poor to have any.

I well remember what £1 looked like. As a young kid I was sent the shops one afternoon to buy something needed for dinner and when I got to the shop I could not find the £1 note. When I came home and told my parents all hell's fury rained down on me for 'losing so much money'.

Long story short, it had slipped out of my pocket and got wedged in a pile of bricks on the grass verge which had been placed there for a reno that my father had commissioned.

I was never so glad to find anything in my life.

Even in the decimal era, two bob (or 20c) felt like a million dollars to a kid and that was my tuckshop money for a week in the late 1970s. These days if there was 20c on the footpath, I doubt I'd bother picking it up.

One quid back then was worth about $40 in today's money so it's no wonder my parents went ballistic.

Back around 1980, when my bank Westpac installed their first ATM's, I would withdraw 6 x $5 notes and that lasted me a week for expenses (other than rent).

I was hoping this chat would turn into a modern version of the 'The Four Yorkshiremen' sketch
If anyone recalls that? - I was so poor.....

Here is link found on interwebs :
https://rumble.com/v3zyn4v-four-yorkshiremen-sketch-1967.tim-brooke-taylor-john-cleese-graham-chapman-.html

Some of these I made up just now [ so your mileage may vary ]

We were so poor growing up, when the power went out, we didn’t notice
We were so poor, our door bell had no ding in it, just went dong!
We were so poor, when the ice cream van came down the street, my mum would tell us it only played music when they ran out of ice cream.
Had to eat cereal with a fork to save on milk
We were so poor, we didn't even have enough play money for our monopoly set


The Australian pound was the currency of Australia from 1910 until 14 February 1966, established by the Australian Notes Act.
I think they used British currency and Spanish dollars (or bartered stuff eg rum as a medium of exchange.) before that,

The old currency was before my time, except at Christmas time in the pudding where I would get 10c or 20c
depending on which old coin I got in the pudding. My brother went back for 3-4 helpings of pudding to try and get some coins
only to find out that year - they forgot to put coins in the pud.

Pounds, Shilling, Pence : abbreviated as £sd / Lsd (no not that LSD)

The pound sign (£) is the symbol for the pound and have always wondered why that is.
Was the 'p' already taken with pennies?

Found that L stands for “libra” which is Latin word for pound in terms of weight (lb).
When a word was abbreviated medieval peoples would often note this by putting a line through a letter eg L becomes £
Or to make doubly sure - some have two lines through it ₤. This is also done for the American cent symbol, ¢.

The first (english) pound coin was equivalent in value to one pound of silver.
One theory is that in Anglo-Saxon times there existed silver coins called sterlings, and 240 of these made up one pound of silver, which eventually became the value of one British pound, which might be why they are sometimes called “pound sterling”?

Those round 50c pieces are worth alot more now as they had a high content of silver.

Was the 'p' already taken with pennies?

To be honest, the d for pennies confused me more than the fancy L for pounds, or even the fancy S for dollars.

The New Pence (decimal) has a p, so I don't think it was reserved.

How did currencies get their names? : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUnj_TSLqgw