"Steve Fitzgerald" ] wrote in message
...
In message , Nick Leverton
writes

That's three people mentioning 1970, but surely the 50p came in in
1969? That's certainly when the bulk of the original ones were dated.

The ten shilling note and the 50p piece co-existed for a little while.
I remember at a primary school fete paying for an item with a 10/- note,
and getting a 50p (plus some pence) in change. To this day I don't know
whether the stallholder mistook the ten bob note for a pound or whether
they assumed the then-new 50p was worth less than it was ! It must have
been in late 1969 or early 1970 because I changed to secondary school
in September of the latter year.

At the time, I remember a lot of complaints that the new 50p and 2s/10p
were too similar and could be confused, especially by older people. I
think originally the only difference was that the 50p was very slightly
larger and had the pointy sides whereas the 2s/10p was round.
--
As far as the 2s and 10p coins were concerned, would it have really been an
issue? I mean, the 10p coin was the same size as the 2s coin and had the
same value for about 10 years, if memory serves.