There are also coins called the Sovereign and Britannia, which are both legal tender, although not in general circulation. Both are minted from 24 carat gold. The Sovereign has a face value of 1 pound and I think the Britannia has a face value of 5. There actual value, on gold markets, is hundreds of pounds, and for a Britannia is over a thousand. Because they are legal tender, and could theoretically be used to buy a bottle of milk, they are exempt from VAT and capital gains tax, when buying or selling.
There's also enduring slang for some some values of cash, that doesn't necessarily have an accompanying bank note. A Pony for 25 pounds and a Ton for 100 is still fairly widely understood, but mostly heard these days in Guy Ritchie movies,.
> [sovereigns] are exempt from VAT and capital gains tax
This is a weird corner of UK tax law. If you buy gold bars and sell them at a profit you have to pay tax on the gains. If you buy and sell the equivalent weight of sovereigns there is no tax to pay, because they're just currency. Buying and selling gold coins in general (like Krugerrands that were not produced by the Royal Mint) attracts tax. Then there are coins which used to be legal tender but are no longer (pre-1837 sovereigns) which have a separate exemption from tax, unless they're a "set" of such coins where there is a different limit.
Absolutely - loads of companies (including the Royal Mint) sell them online. Prices seem to vary depending on whether the issue is collectable or not. If you're not fussed about buying something collectable but just want the best price, the mark-ups seem to be around 5% over the price of gold. Note that as well as not having to pay capital gains tax on profits, you don't pay any VAT [like a sales tax] on the sale either. This is very unusual - almost no other non-essential item is zero-rated for VAT.
Note that legal tender != can buy milk with. Legal tender is only about payment of debt. A shop selling you something doesn’t have to accept any specific form of payment, as they don’t let you build up a tab which needs repaying.
I think it was the popularity of Only Fools and Horses that gave rise to a pseudo-Cockney slang common in my time as an undergrad. Degrees were ranked:
'A reference to the libel case involving the novelist Jeffrey Archer. The term is slang for the sum of £2,000, a reference to the amount that Archer allegedly offered as a bribe which was the basis of the case.'
https://inews.co.uk/light-relief/offbeat/the-most-confusing-...
Cockney rhyming slang. The custom is that you take a two-word phrase whose second word rhymes with the target word, and then you just use the first word.
So "Plates of meat" == "feet", but you just say "me plates are cold". Scousers don't do that.
[Edit] There was a cafe off Haymarket in London, called "My Old China". That was another kind of plate; a "china" is a "china plate", which rhymes with "mate". So it's "my old mate".
Translation - more rhyming slang, although not necessarily 'cockney'
Lady Godiva - 'fiver' (£5)
Ayton Senna - 'tenner' (£10) - obviously a more modern idiom.
I have not come accross a Commodore before so am going to guess because of where it sits in the list as £15
Score - £20 (as in three-score-years-and-10 and all that)
Pony - £25 - some latin root in there - that is an old one.
I don't think they are dying out, in that paying a pony is still £25 with cash or with a card.
Funny, mine is "fivek". I bought that machine the first week it was available, I'd been waiting and waiting for a large hires screen so the name fell right out.
Nugget is realtively newish. Never heard of a Red until now, or a bill, a £100 was sometimes called a ton. Monkey comes from Indian currency, I think the 500 rupee had a monkey on it. Never heard of a Bag. A common one in my time was a Jackson for a £5, as in Jackson 5.
Some minor corrections: the sovereign is 22 carat gold, the gold Britannia (24 carat) has a face value £100, and the silver Britannia has a face value of £2.
There's also enduring slang for some some values of cash, that doesn't necessarily have an accompanying bank note. A Pony for 25 pounds and a Ton for 100 is still fairly widely understood, but mostly heard these days in Guy Ritchie movies,.