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Comment by MarcScott | Hacker News Reader

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,.

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> [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.

(Not legal advice!)

But are sovereign coins as accessible as gold? How much markup do they command?

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.

Grand (£1000) is also a really common term. I think I hear that more than the mathematical term.

We use "grand" ubiquitously here in Australia for $1000.

Here in America too.

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.

Were I a shopkeeper and someone offered me a £1 Sovereign for £1 worth of merchandise, I don't think I would have any trouble accepting it.

The Coinage Act of 1971 describes, in detail, which combinations of coins must be accepted for various purchase amounts.

No, it specifies amounts for legal tender. That's relevant when paying a debt, but not making a purchase in a shop.

Thank you so much. I finally understand the line "I put a pony on Liverpool" from "IT Crowd".

Stick a pony in me pocket

I'll fetch the suitcase from the van

'Cos if you want the best ones

But you don't ask questions

Then brother, I'm your man

- Fools & Horses Theme

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:

- Geoff (Hurst) -- Class I -- "first"

- Simon (leBonn) -- Class II:1

- Desmond (Tutu) -- Class II:2

- Douglas (Hurd) -- Class III "turd"

(I matriculated '91. And not in London.)

Other slang terms (more commonly used in London):

- “Nugget” - £1

- “Reds” - £50 (usually only used in the plural e.g. a stack of reds)

- “Bill” - £100

- “Monkey” - £500

- “Grand” - £1000

- “Bag” - £1000 (from cockney “bag of sand” rhyming with “grand”)

£5 and its multiples: Lady, Ayrton, Commodore, Score, Pony.

Sadly, I think these are dying out due to the move towards a cashless society.

The most common use for any of these (for me) was to ask someone to lend me a bit of cash when I'd left my wallet at home.

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.

Commodore - Once, twice, three times a lady...

As in "Lend me a tenor"?

And as well as Ton and Pony there's:

- "Score" - £20

- "Nicker" - £1

Or if you want to go full cockney "Deep Sea Diver" or "Lady Godiva" £5 (fiver), and "Ayrton Senna" for £10 (tenner)

My desktop host name is fiver after the character from Watership Down (and it’s a 5k iMac), so the VM I run on it is Godiva.

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.

Also (possibly only amongst bankers in London):

- "Yard" - £billion (derived from the french "milliard")

Milliard was the standard British word for 1,000,000,000 until some point in the 1970s.

Then there was the British billion, which was a million million. The US version has taken over completely.

Same in German.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales

From Numberphile, "How big is a billion?" (2012):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-52AI_ojyQ

Also "buck" and "bar", which I think are one and two million. Not uniquely British, but certainly used here.

Born and bred Londoner, never heard nugget in my life. TIL!

It’s a bit outdated tbh, as it was a reference to to gold colour of the pound coin (as shown in the article).

To be used as follows:

Bredda, set me a nugget. I’ve only got 50p and I’m feeling that Junior Spesh [1]

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6pbZLiLt30

I use(d) it a lot. Specifically for pound coins, rather than the value of £1.

e.g. you would ask, "Can you swap us 5 nuggets for a Lady?" If you wanted to go and get something from a vending machine, but only had notes.

Even more so than other terms, I think this is being lost to cashlessness.

Jacks: fiva: £5

Also used to denote weights of certain herbs circa 2000:

Jacks: £5

Ben: £10

Henry (I.e 1/8): £20

*the best herbs :))

I didn’t realize grand for 1000 was slang. That one made it to the USA too.

I think it probably crossed the atlantic in the other direction; I'm pretty sure that "grand" for a thousand didn't originate here.

Americans also say “large” for $1000, and “grand” is French for “large” so the travel might have been in the opposite direction.

Anyone know what a hundred “large” might mean?

I believe it’s a hundred thousand

I'm British and have never heard any of these before except "grand".

I always thought Bag of Sand as Scouse, we live and learn?

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".

An Archer, £2,000

'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-...

score == 20GBP

for 50 quid, I've heard "reddies" quite a bit too, but my personal favourite -- an "Ayrton" for 10GBP (rhyming slang: Ayrton Senna -> tenner)

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.

Bob is also now another word for pounds. That might be a northern thing though.

20 bob is a quid.

Source: Yorkshuh

I'm from Yorkshire too.

I've definitely heard people referring to 5 Bob notes, which were never a (shilling) thing, although most of the time I'm not sure it matters.

(It cost a few Bob. Bent as a 9 Bob note)

A 1oz Britannia has a face value of £100

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