Nice thrup’nies
Shit. I was going to post about the “Mercury” dime tonight, but I see I’ve already done that. So how about a threepence?
It’s not as interesting, although it is Cockney rhyming slang for tits (thrup’ny bit = tit).
Thruppences were minted irregularly between about 1540 and decimalisation in 1971, in a number of metals and designs. Three pence equals a third of a shilling or an eightieth of a pound. The old British currency was sort of base twelve. Which is cool because twelve is divisible by two, three, four and six, giving lots and lots of different possible coin denominations.
This particular reverse was designed for Edward VIII before he abdicated, and was used throughout the reign of his brother, George VI. It’s nickel-brass and was produced simultaneously with the silver theepence for a while.
The flowers are thrift, also known as sea thrift or sea pinks. Thrift? Money? Get it? The designer was Frances Madge Kitchener.
Boring. Told you. So what’s with all this? I finally got around to putting some of my coin collection on merchandise today.
No, no…I’m not trying to sell more of my shit to you longsuffering bastards. Blog links make Google think my merchandise is swell (in fact, I really ought to be linking much more often to suck up to the search engines). And, frankly, I’ve been looking this stuff up all day and I’m WAY too lazy to come up with something else to blog about.
June 15, 2010 — 10:09 pm
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