Thanks, Alan, for the clarification on the Churchill CROWN. You are most certainly correct. I guess I subconsciously tilted toward "pound" when I typed instead of "crown." Glad I never had to work with the old money system, though the coins back then were much prettier, as were the bicycles.
Peter Jourdain
Whitewater, Wisconsin USA
> From: Alan Lloyd <adl2k@yahoo.com>
\r?\n> Subject: Re: [CR] Making sense of old British prices---addendum photos
\r?\n> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
\r?\n> Date: Thursday, December 4, 2008, 9:18 AM
\r?\n> It isn't a "Churchill pound coin", it is a
\r?\n> (Churchill) crown: five shillings (5/-), four to a pound.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> The pound coins weren't introduced until quite a while
\r?\n> after decimalisation in 1971 (when?) and led to the
\r?\n> replacement of the pound note, a move that still hasn't
\r?\n> been made successfully in the USA with the dollar bill!
\r?\n>
\r?\n> And in answer to an earlier question about crowns (NB: the
\r?\n> slang for these was a dollar, from when the exchange-rate
\r?\n> was 4.03 dollars to the pound in the 1940s), they were still
\r?\n> legal tender (IE: they could be used) but were actually only
\r?\n> issued for 'ceremonial' purposes and, as such,
\r?\n> collected.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Alan Lloyd
\r?\n> Schaumburg, Illinois, U.S.A.