A new £1 coin will enter circulation in 2017 - and the current coin will cease to be legal tender shortly afterwards. It means that all machines selling items from train tickets to chocolate bars will have to be updated.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below about it.
1. What colour will the new pound coins be?
2. How long have the old pound coins been around for?
3. When is the official launch date of the new pound coins?
4. What are some of the British icons the new pound coins will be commemorating?
5. What will the old pound coins stop being legal?
They've been around since 1983, but they won’t be around for much longer. This year, all of the UK’s old pound coins will be phased out and replaced by these, shiny dodecagons with a gold-coloured outer ring and a silver-coloured inner ring, both thinner and lighter than the outgoing model.
The fact it’s been around for over 30 years, it’s served this country really well but the counterfeiters have caught up with it, so it’s time to introduce something new for the 21st century, and that’s what we’re doing with the new one-pound coin.
More than a billion of the twelve-sided coins will flood into circulation on March the 28th, boasting new security features including a hologram that changes from a pound symbol to the number 1 when seen from different angles.
But that’s not all. Joining them in your purses and pockets will be three new designs for the two-pound and fifty-pence piece.
We will be commemorating Jane Austen, the great British writer, Isaac Newton, the great British scientist. We’ll also be issuing a coin in connexion with the centenary of the First World War, and be commemorating the beginnings of the Royal Air Force, the royal flying corps.
In the meantime, the government’s urged stockpilers of the round pound to act quickly. The famous quid loses its legal tender status on October 15th, leaving less than ten months to bank them or spend them.
Jon Ironmonger, BBC News.
Key:
1 gold and silver
2 thirty years
3 28th March (2017)
4 Jane Austen, Isaac Newton, the First World War, the Royal
Air Force
5 October 15th (2017)
