D Day 50 years on

Gremlin

Gremlin

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I'm talking decimalisation day, 15 February 1971
It came up on the news earlier asking if can remember what they were doing at the time.

I do, I started a new job, working for an insurance broker, which meant giving quotes for all types of insurance in a strange
currency, certainly learned to deal in it fast and found it far easier to work with when it came to percentages etc.

The crunch came a couple of weeks later on the 2nd March when Vehicle and General Insurance went bust and we had people queuing down
the street all day

So I had to learn fast and in less then a month it had become normal to me
 
I can remember a few things having their prices raised by the simple expedient of changing d to p.
The only other thing I can remember about it was that it was harder to spend the half crowns that assorted aging relatives continued to give me for birthdays/commercialmas for a couple of years afterwards!
 
simon ess said:
My overarching memory is a bag of chips going from 6d to 5p overnight.
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I think for me it was a Mars Bar.......I think it went from 7d to 7p. And as time went by the realisation that e.g. something costing 75p was 15shillings ! :cautious::oops: :$o_O
 
I was only 6 at the time but I remember some of my sweets changed price!
 
I still mourn the loss of the ten bob note, which might arrive in a Birthday or Xmas card from a generous Aunt. After they were withdrawn you couldn't really send a 50p through the post without giving away what was inside the card to potentially light-fingered posties! That must have doubled the cost for a lot of OAPs, who then had to send a £1 note instead.

It must have also cost shopkeepers a lot of money buying new tills (cash registers) and weighing scales, or having existing ones converted - they were mostly mechanical in those days, so it wouldn't have been a cheap option. No wonder they put their prices up!
 
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Don't think we changed to kilos etc at the same time, in fact many shops still haven't
 
I used to work in an amusement arcade in Porthtowan at the weekends. On D Day, I spent the day removing old coins from machines and then reloading them with new coins. That is quite a skilled job - on those machines that tip coins out if you are lucky (ours were called Compton Cakewalks), the coins need to be arranged to be tempting without giving the boss's profits away.

The most amazing thing was the quantity and speed of Pfennigs and farthings that appeared in the machines - both were exactly the same size and weight of new pennies.
 
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Gremlin said:
Don't think we changed to kilos etc at the same time, in fact many shops still haven't
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I wasn't referring to the weight side of things in my comment about scales; many sets of scales in shops in 1971 had a calculation feature that enabled the shop assistant to set (or view) the price per lb (imperial pound) for the goods to be weighed, so the scales would then give the weight and correct price for the item placed on them.

These type of scales were in use in most, busy, high-street grocers, butchers and fishmongers at the time of decimalisation and needed to be recalibrated (or replaced) to cope with £ and new pence, rather than £, /- (s) and d. The shopkeeper had to bear this cost, not the government that had dictated the change. Just as they had to do years later, to replace imperial (lbs oz) scales with metric ones (Kg g).
 
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I had a Saturday job in a greengrocers when at school and it didn't have them.
But we did learn maths at school without calculators, they were banned.
 
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My mother told me an old lady she knew remarked that she'd be glad when D-Day was over, and everybody could go back to using proper money.
It annoyed a lot of people that the cost of "spending a penny" went up to 4.8d.
 
The old way just seems so complicated, well, as someone born a couple of years after the event!
 
We had moved to Hong Kong 10 months earlier so I had already got used to $ and c by the time we returned 3 years later.
I do recall though, in the mid-80's living in Germany, that the old 5p/1s coin was a good substitute for 1 DM in cigarette machines, so I could get a packet of 20 West fags for 20p rather than DM4, the equivalent then of about £1.20.
 
cambsno said:
The old way just seems so complicated, well, as someone born a couple of years after the event!
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But you had a good reason to learn your times tables!
 
it caused quiet a few initial problems but most of us learned fast .. I was running a wholesale delivery van at the time which involved invoicing every customer at point of sale .. and when when dealing with a couple of hundred items per invoice with some of them involving weights as well .it became complicated
 
Gremlin said:
I had a Saturday job in a greengrocers when at school and it didn't have them.
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Were scales even invented when you were still at school? ;) :exit:

Dangerous teasing aside, the price of stuff was usually quite low per lb in a greengrocers (often only a few d per lb) so it would have been fairly easy to manage with normal balance type scales, but trying to work out 6oz at 7/6d per lb while trying to prevent a queue a mile long developing was a bit of an art, often requiring a ready reckoner or the afore-mentioned scales that gave price per lb. Like these: Antique Berkel Auto Scale Co. Ltd. Kitchen / Shop Scales - Rhvintage (rhvintageinteriors.com)

No one has mentioned guineas yet, which was £1 1/- (£1 5p), and the amount usually charged by professional persons such as Drs and Solicitors, or for prestigious items such as tailor made suits, prior to decimalisation, and long after the guinea coin itself had gone out of general circulation.

PS If anyone wants a bit of nostalgic fun, how much would 6oz of sirloin steak costing 7/6d a lb. have cost? The first correct answer wins a virtual Jaffa cake. :giggle:
 
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Surprised to learn the other night the farthing was still in use in the early sixties,, don’t remember it although I was very young then.
 
Mr Badger said:
Were scales even invented when you were still at school? ;) :exit:

Dangerous teasing aside, the price of stuff was usually quite low per lb in a greengrocers (often only a few d per lb) so it would have been fairly easy to manage with normal balance type scales, but trying to work out 6oz at 7/6d per lb while trying to prevent a queue a mile long developing was a bit of an art, often requiring a ready reckoner or the afore-mentioned scales that gave price per lb. Like these: Antique Berkel Auto Scale Co. Ltd. Kitchen / Shop Scales - Rhvintage (rhvintageinteriors.com)

No one has mentioned guineas yet, which was £1 1/- (£1 5p), and the amount usually charged by professional persons such as Drs and Solicitors, or for prestigious items such as tailor made suits, prior to decimalisation, and long after the guinea coin itself had gone out of general circulation.

PS If anyone wants a bit of nostalgic fun, how much would 6oz of sirloin steak costing 7/6d a lb. have cost? The first correct answer wins a virtual Jaffa cake. :giggle:
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2/8d
 
Moved home from Ireland and started High School. I used to be able to work imperial and decimal equally easily in my head but not any more.
 
I remember everything seemed to be 12 shillings and sixpence. Of course it was not, just my memory playing tricks on me.

Or twelve and six.
 
mj4456 said:
Surprised to learn the other night the farthing was still in use in the early sixties,, don’t remember it although I was very young then.
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I was born in 1953, so I was seven at the start of the 60s and I don't remember the farthing in use either. A couple of online sources say it ceased to be legal tender after 31 December 1960 though.
 
jonbeeza said:
I remember everything seemed to be 12 shillings and sixpence. Of course it was not, just my memory playing tricks on me.
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Airfix series 1 kits were 1/9d but the most expensive one was the Sunderland flying boat at 10/6d. I could barely believe it when I got that for my 10th birthday!
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Airfix series 1 kits were 1/9d but the most expensive one was the Sunderland flying boat at 10/6d. I could barely believe it when I got that for my 10th birthday!
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Used to love doing Airfix, last one we did was early 70s. Lovely memories.
 
Mr Badger said:
Were scales even invented when you were still at school?
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Only on fish :rolleyes: :p
Yes surprisingly they were
I bet the butcher had price off pat like you get with a lot of
tradesmen.
Got to admit though decimalisation made percentages a lot easier to work
out
 
MartynK said:
I was born in 1953, so I was seven at the start of the 60s and I don't remember the farthing in use either. A couple of online sources say it ceased to be legal tender after 31 December 1960 though.
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Can’t remember the quiz show I saw it on but they quoted that the Mint stopped production end of of 59 and legal until 63, might have been the Chase. Going to check myself now, I have doubted answers in the past.
 
mj4456 said:
Can’t remember the quiz show I saw it on but they quoted that the Mint stopped production end of of 59 and legal until 63, might have been the Chase. Going to check myself now, I have doubted answers in the past.
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I seem to recall reading that production stopped in 1956, but I'm not sure about that. Can you post the answers once you've checked? I'm curious now.
 
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