To me, they’ll always be pennies from heaven
Penny for your thoughts on the 11th-hour rescue of our coppers? The ones down the sofa rather than down the station, that is. The idea that the Government could do away with them suddenly made us come over all nostalgic, even though we hadn’t taken pennies and twopence pieces seriously for years.
Now that a Freddo chocolate bar costs 25p, even our children have little interest in small change.
No matter that about 60per cent of all 1p and 2p coins are used just once and soon after drop out of circulation; when we heard of a Treasury review into the “denominational mix of coins”, we rallied to their defence.
As it happens, just last month I took an executive decision to gather up all the loose change silting up drawers, rattling around in dishes, hiding inside baskets. I even took a can opener to our massive metal money box that looked like a jar of Wonka sweets and weighed more than Augustus Gloop.
Along with the mountain of coppers, there were a few old £1 coins, some Deutschmarks and a £5 Princess Diana memorial coin, which I bought unsentimentally because I thought it might be an investment. It has an ebay resale value of €10.72 (£9.50) – a splendid return, but not enough to pay for a Friday night cinema ticket.
So I laid that one aside as a legacy for my great-great-grandchildren, then got my nine-year-old to help me count the rest. It was satisfying, neatly stacking coins with rapidly blackening fingers and feeling that little bit richer with the construction of every little round tower. Grand total? £59.31.
Some might dismiss copper currency as an anachronism, but as we loaded our booty into little bags and took them to the bank, we felt minted.