Last month I blogged about the impending withdrawal of the round £1 coin. Well the weeks have flown by and this Sunday (15th October 2017) is the final chance to spend any of the old style pounds. The Royal Mint estimated last week that there were still 400 million of them out there somewhere, and although over time many will have been lost the actual missing total may be far higher if you factor in a big unknown.
One of the main drivers for the introduction of the new 12 sided coin was to make counterfeiting far harder to do as there were estimates that as many as one in thirty old coins in circulation were actually fakes. As no one knows exactly how many fakes were produced it must be almost impossible to calculate the true number of coins left to be handed in.
Although a number of large retailers including Tesco have indicated they will still accept the old coins after Sunday the strict legal position is the coins will no longer be “Legal Tender”. My advice is you should refuse to accept them in change for any transactions after Sunday as you may find it impossible to spend them on unless you are off to Tesco!
I do however believe that although there is no obligation, most Banks will accept the old £1 coins for a short period of grace!
Written by: Colin from KSV.