Posts Tagged ‘Coins’
Where are all the coins? US Covid-Driven Coin Shortage!
The United States are facing a nationwide coin shortage in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic – urging members of the public to use cash where possible to help ease the coin crisis.
As more people turn to online shopping and contactless payments and avoid using physical money due to the virus, the normal flow of currency has been severely interrupted.
Last year, third-party coin processors and retailers accounted for around 83% of coins in the US coin supply chain.
However, as many stores have been closed and with the US Mint briefly slowing production to implement safety measures, further interruptions to this supply chain have been caused.
The effects mean that as stores are reopening, retailers are quickly exhausting their cash inventories, with some now advising customers they may not be able to provide change in coins.
Solving the US coin supply problem
The US Mint is now asking people to return any coins they might have lying around and to use exact cash for purchases to help replenish the country’s supply.
The Fed have even convened a US Coin Task Force, working to restore the vital coin supply chain.
And what’s more, one particular bank has even started paying members of the public to return any spare change.
UK Coin Shortage?
With the UK public being urged to use contactless where possible during the pandemic, could we too being facing a similar issue soon?
In recent years demand for cash in the UK has dropped, not simply because card payments have increased, but also due to the introduction of the 12-sided £1 coin in 2017.
As members of the public were tasked with returning their old round pound coins to the bank, other denominations, loose change and unwanted coins were also returned, meaning a surplus of cash was injected into the system.
We’ve certainly felt the effects of this with the lack of new coins entering circulation in the last few years.
Secondary Market Coin Prices
We recently updated the Change Checker eBay Tracker, revealing the average selling prices for the top 10 UK coins and banknotes.
Amazingly, there’s been an 18% increase in the overall value of these issues – the biggest increase we’ve seen since the Tracker began!
With less cash being used in the past few months, it’s likely collectors are heading to the secondary market to get hold of certain coins, rather than waiting to find them in their change.
Additionally, with more time being spent at home and people seeking new hobbies to keep themselves entertained, new collectors are perhaps becoming more aware of rare and collectable coins that might be worth owning and as a result, are heading to the secondary market to get hold of one.
We’ve seen this increased demand on the secondary market driving up the prices, particularly for the more rare and sought-after coins.
Now, as more retailers open up shop in the UK and the country starts to head towards the ‘new normal’, will we start to see more cash exchanging hands once again? And will collectors be able to start hunting down coins in their change once more?
Perhaps one of the biggest questions on collector’s lips will be whether we’ll see an increase in demand, leading to new commemorative coins being released into circulation…
At Change Checker HQ we’ve certainly got our fingers crossed!
If you’re interested in coin collecting, our Change Checker web app is completely free to use and allows users to:
– Find and identify the coins in their pocket
– Collect and track the coins they have
– Swap their spare coins with other Change Checkers
Sign up today at: www.changechecker.org/app
Rosalind Franklin becomes the first female scientist celebrated on a UK coin!
In the year that would have marked her 100th birthday, The Royal Mint released a 50p celebrating the life and crucial work of Rosalind Franklin.
2020 UK Rosalind Franklin 50p
The striking design was created by David Knapton in collaboration with King’s College, London, and features a depiction of Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray, ‘Photograph 51’, which revealed the helical structure of DNA in her laboratory at King’s College, London in 1952.
Franklin’s name appears written vertically to the right, and cleverly, the abbreviation ‘DNA’ is written horizontally, tying in to the last two letters of her name.
This really is a coin full of numismatic firsts, as this was the first time that Franklin’s DNA story had featured on a UK coin, and it was also the very first time a female scientist had featured on a UK coin!
The Story Behind The Scientist
In 1869, Swiss chemist Friedrich Miescher isolated DNA from white blood cells and named it “nuclein”. The term “nuclein” was later changed to “nucleic acid” and then to “deoxyribonucleic acid”, what we now know as DNA.
83 years later, one of Britain’s greatest scientists, Rosalind Franklin made a crucial finding to the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, yet her contribution was little known.
Image credit: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Applying X-ray diffraction methods to the study of DNA enabled Franklin to discover the helical conformation of the molecule, in a photograph called, ‘Photograph 51’. This work laid the foundations for James Watson and Francis Crick to later establish that the structure of DNA was in fact a double-helix polymer (a spiral consisting of two DNA strands).
Image Credit: King’s College London Archives
Tragically, at the age of just 37, Franklin passed away from ovarian cancer, robbing her of the same awards and recognitions that her colleagues were gifted.
To mark what would have been a very special birthday, this 50p was issued to restore Franklin’s rightful legacy, and celebrates her significant role in the discovery of DNA.
The final discovery
In a Cambridge University laboratory in 1953, just 1 year after Franklin’s discovery, Francis Crick and James Watson found a twisted strand of deoxyribonucleic acid, intertwined in such a way that they could pull apart, replicate themselves, and pass their genetic code from old cells to new.
In 2003, to mark the 50th anniversary of Watson and Crick‘s discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, The Royal Mint issued the DNA Double Helix £2.
As mentioned above, had Rosalind Franklin not discovered the helical conformation of DNA, Watson and Crick may never have established it’s double-helix structure!
The coin’s design, by John Mills, pays tribute to the ‘double-helix’ structure, with it spiralling across the coin and strands of chromosomes with the letter notations for the four main components of DNA. This coin has a circulating mintage of 4,299,000 and ranks as ‘less common’ on our Scarcity Index.
Other science themed UK coins
2019 Stephen Hawking 50p
In 2019, less than a year since his death, The Royal Mint released the Stephen Hawking 50p, honouring his works as one of the most influential physicists of the modern age.
He became the very first person to be celebrated in The Royal Mint’s Innovation in Science series and only the third person to be commemorated on a coin within a year of their death (the others being Winston Churchill and the Queen Mother!)
The reverse of the coin, designed by Edwina Ellis, features a stylised black hole and the inscription ‘Stephen Hawking’ . It also shows the Bekenstein-Hawking formula, which describes the thermodynamic entropy of a black hole!
2017 Isaac Newton 50p
Sir Isaac Newton is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and a key figure in the scientific revolution. He changed our understanding of mathematics and physics, redefined the way we see the world and shaped the security of our currency in his role as Master of the Mint.
Designed by Aaron West, this 50p coin was issued to commemorate the achievements of Sir Isaac Newton and it remembers the legacy he left. It has a circulating mintage of just 1,801,500.
2009 Darwin £2
In 2009, The Royal Mint celebrated 200 years since Charles Darwin’s birth and 150 years since the publication of ‘On the Origin of Species’ by issuing this £2 coin. It has a circulating mintage of 3,903,000.
Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was known as the ‘father of evolution’. At the time of publication in 1859, his book was extremely controversial as it made it seem possible that humans evolved from apes, which contradicted the widely held Orthodox Church theory of creation!
2001 Wireless Transmission £2
In 1901, Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian physicist, succeeded in sending the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean, disproving theories that the curvature of the earth would limit the transmission to 200 miles or less.
The message – simply containing the Morse code signal for the letter ‘s’ – travelled more than 2,000 miles from Poldhu in Cornwall to Newfoundland in Canada and won him worldwide fame and a Nobel Prize in physics in 1909.
In 2001, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first wireless transmission, The Royal Mint issued this £2 coin. It entered circulation and has a mintage of 4,558,000.
Do you have a favourite science themed UK coin? Let us know in the comments!
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Colouring with Change Checker!
I don’t know about you but here at Change Checker, we’ve been getting creative in our spare time recently.
We’ve loved creating designs and patterns from our coin collections, seeing Change Checkers design their own 50p coins for our Key Worker Heroes and creating their own A-Z 10p designs too!
But our latest creative activity, has involved partnering up with Half Asleep Chris to design the very first Change Checker Colouring Sheets.
The Change Checker Colouring Sheets feature some of the most popular coins as a template that you can download, for you to colour in at home!
Once you’ve completed your colouring sheets, send us a photo of them by commenting on this Facebook post, or by emailing [email protected] for the chance to see your design feature in our July Newsletter!
To get involved, just follow these simple steps:
- Download your Change Checker Colouring Sheets
Change-Checker Colouring SheetsDownload
- Get colouring!
- Comment a picture of your designs on this Facebook post or email it to [email protected]
- Watch our July Newsletter on Youtube to find out if your design features!
Entries close 24th July. We can’t wait to see how you all colour in your coins!
Happy colouring!
If you’re interested in coin collecting, our Change Checker web app is completely free to use and allows users to:
– Find and identify the coins in their pocket
– Collect and track the coins they have
– Swap their spare coins with other Change Checkers
Sign up today at: www.changechecker.org/app