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Top left is the 1797 “Cartwheel” penny. Worth its weight in copper, 1 oz at the time. Now worth about 30 US cents, copper value. One penny = 1 oz copper. Called a cartwheel, ‘cos it was very heavy. “Pocket buster” might have been more appropriate. Top right is a mid-nineteenth century Victorian penny at 9gm, a third of an ounce, very worn because it too is pure copper. You can see how much thinner than the cartwheel it is. The next three are bronze pennies, also a third of an ounce, copper with a hint of tin to give hardness, so they aren’t so worn. Bottom left is the obverse of the 1967 penny, the last pre-decimal one. Bottom middle is a 1986 decimal bronze penny, worth 2.4 of the penny on its left ….. which it replaced in 1971.
Bottom right is a 1994 copper plated steel penny, hence the dullness and corrosion.
Inflation in nine coins. Well, four really. Cartwheel, Victorian to mid Elizabethan, bronze new P and steel new P.
15th February 1971. Biggest currency con ever imposed on the British. The penny, the “d” in LSD, Libra, solidi, denarii, Pound, shilling and pence, eliminated. Two millennia of worth reduced to a copper coated steel counter.
{edit} the denarius used to be silver (of course) until it became so clipped and diluted with copper that they just moved to a copper coin.
