Earlier today The Royal Mint unveiled a new set of coins that will be released in the UK. The coins were created as a part of a national redesign contest held in 2005. The winning designer was a guy named Matthew Dent (who’s website is surprisingly working) who created a design that’s pretty rad. The coins feature the Shield of the Royal Army, but split strategically into 6 different pieces, with the 7th coin carrying the entire shield.

The design ends up looking rather contemporary and fun at the same time. Only putting portions of a design on the back of a coin is rather ballsy, while lining all of the coins up to create the shield gives you the fun part. I’d also like to point out that I love the odd shapes of the coin, whereas here in the States we differentiate coins by their size, thickness, and the pattern along their edge.

My last thought on this though, is however cool they are, do we really need coins anymore? I almost feel like it’s a waste of time, energy, and money to make them anymore. With credit cards doing the majority of our purchasing these days, I feel like we don’t really need coins much longer. But then again the other option would be to round the prices of all products up or down, and that could be a serious pain in the ass.

Bobby

22 Comments »

1. We need only coins! No paper trail! It sounds way crazier when I say that out loud.

   Comment by Brad — April 2, 2008 #

2. I hope all of my readers are just like you, haha…

   Comment by Bobby — April 2, 2008 #

3. what about the queen! god save her!

   Comment by Justin R — April 2, 2008 #

4. Oh yeah, she’s on the front as usual! I forgot to put that in there.

   Comment by Bobby — April 2, 2008 #

5. ooo they are fabulous, i look forward to spending with them. and i hope we never lose coins, for some reason i always feel rich when my purse is full of coins (even if they are usually coppers..)

   Comment by katie — April 2, 2008 #

6. we don’t need coins, we don’t need notes, we need medals.

   Comment by jean jullien — April 2, 2008 #

7. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/Yuri_Gagarin_official_portrait.jpg

   Comment by jean jullien — April 2, 2008 #

8. OMG all the Brits are crazy, haha…

   Comment by Bobby — April 2, 2008 #

9. Wow, cool. I like coins. But not too many. Infact over here in the UK it seems way too easy to collect coins - whereas in the states with your $1 bill being equivalent to a 50p coin it seems easier to collect notes…

   Notes are more convenient but darn those coins look good. I presume you could put one of each together to make a jigsaw-esque puzzle to make the whole shield? That would only cost £1.88 as well :D

   Comment by Rob McDougall — April 2, 2008 #

10. Issuing coins like this is a fund-raiser for the government, because people are more likely to just keep anything like this that they find rather than spend it. Coin collectors all over the world will buy them, too.

    Thanks for posting about these coins. They’re pretty darn cool.

    Comment by Amy — April 2, 2008 #

11. Absolutely love love love these, turns out he’s a graduate of the university I’m at too!

    Comment by Tony — April 3, 2008 #

12. In Denmark we have encoutered a problem with our smallest coin, the 25-øre coin… It has become more expensive to produce the coin than it actual value, from October 2008 the coin will be no longer be used. The loss of the coin will result in products being sligthly (minimalistickly) more expensive, but people are happy that the coin is being removed from the system, nobody wants it… Oh, and these coins beats the danish coins on so many levels…

    Comment by Benjamin — April 3, 2008 #

13. “I’d also like to point out that I love the odd shapes of the coin, whereas here in the States we differentiate coins by their size, thickness, and the pattern along their edge.”
    So do they!
    Those designs are still following the shape, size and i imagine edge of the current coins.
    I might also add that the Euro coins also follow the different size, thickness and edge pattern strategy :)

    Comment by Sandra Rosa — April 3, 2008 #

14. its the Royal Arms, not “Shield of the Royal Army” :)

    Comment by Peter — April 3, 2008 #

15. New British Coins…

    New British Coins
    Page which i found those on

    congrats, fresh idea and great looking, however, imho they should rather join the Euro countries….

    Trackback by the Secret HNC — April 3, 2008 #

16. I moved here from America a few months ago and I just got used to the regular coinage which is in fact quite confusing to someone who is used to mostly bills. I do in fact think the older coins are prettier. These seem a bit too overdone. Also how will the machines that take coins recognize them. Will there be any trouble there?

    Comment by Pam — April 3, 2008 #

17. Pam: Coin recognition won’t be a problem. Much like Mom from Futurama, the queen has a remote control that controls all robots in the UK. We can only pray she sets the controls to accept new coins, and not to kill.

    Comment by Bobby — April 3, 2008 #

18. I love the idea of using the shape of the coin to radically crop an image–like it’s a little window or something. True, that coins have become card to deal with in daily commerce. (I’m always dumping them on my dresser every morning because I don’t like the way they jingle during my daily jog around the park…)

    Comment by Randy — April 3, 2008 #

19. Bobby.. why is this posted in “shoes/design”… shoes??? :)

    Comment by Benjamin — April 4, 2008 #

20. I keep all my coins in my shoes, don’t you? hahaha… fixed.

    Comment by Bobby — April 4, 2008 #

21. We got rid of 1 and 2 cent coins in Australia long ago. We still have prices like $1.99 and $2.37, the cash register just rounds the final amount to the nearest 5 cents. 5 cent pieces are becoming a pain though as vending machines often don’t accept them and they build up easily. We have $1 and $2 coins which I like but our best money feature is our monopoly style colored notes. I just got back from a trade show in Las Vegas and I have to say it is annoying in the US to always be counting how much you have because all the notes are the same color.

    Anyway these new British coins look really cool. Nice to see them fit together in a set.

    Comment by Nigel — April 8, 2008 #

22. Where’s the £2 coin though?

    I live in the UK and this is the first I’ve even heard about this!

    Comment by DJ — April 11, 2008 #

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