FINANCIAL NEWS

TUPNews has come to coin-related grief not twice but thrice today.

First I went to my local newsagent this morning to pick up a can of Coke and a copy of the Sun, which I attempted to pay for with one of the new £2 coins. Shopkeeper just refuses to accept it. Without any other coinage on me, and in a state of utter rage, I have little choice but to declare a fatwa against the shop (only my second in three years of living in East Dulwich, the first being against Café Noodle after ordering one of their inappropriately-named “Happy Meals”, which is a different story altogether) and storm out never to return, which is a pain given that it is the closest newsagent to the bus stop.

At lunchtime I go to change some Euro-denominated coinage into pounds sterling, as my cheapskate employer won’t allow me to return coins from my travel advance. Therefore I have an ongoing FX position scattered about my desk. I’m trying to change 11 euros, which is like £7. The guy won’t let me have it. “Not enough.” What the fuck? You’ve got a rack of coins and a fucking computer in front of you, what the fuck is your problem?

I learn the problem at the next place I try, the American Express office on Haymarket. Here the clerk obliges, but when I express disbelief at his rival’s reluctance to trade (expecting him to unburden himself of some more vignettes about those fascists at Eurochange), he explains that bureaux de change always avoid taking coins because of the associated liquidity risk. Paper money trades so quickly and in such volume across the counter that the individual branch can cope with day-to-day fluctuations in the exchange rate simply by following instructions from head office. But just like on my desk, coins tend to build up because no customers want them – and this point, he pulled a massive plastic bag of coins out of his desk – and so there is liquidity risk at the branch level as well as currency risk at the company level. In other words, something’s only worth something if you can actually sell it, and frequently they just can’t shift coins.

At first I thought this was bullshit, as surely people always buy foreign currency by handing over a wad of domestic notes, and receiving $241.67 in return. But I suppose recently I’ve been more likely to request 200 euros and pay for it on a card rather than take sterling out of the wall and exchange it.

As TUPNews was standing in the queue at Tesco Metro contemplating this exchange, the sweet middle-aged Indian woman at the checkout queried my 10p. Apparently she had never heard of the Bailiwick of Jersey. “It’s fucking LEGAL TENDER!” I near-bellowed.

UPDATE!

Just did some quick research about this report, and it turns out that my “new” £2 coin was in fact minted in 1995, before £2 coins were properly introduced, which means it is in fact rare and probably valuable, and TUPNews used it to buy cornflakes and Lucozade.