When Queen Elizabeth steps aside, what happens to the British currency?

Question

Will new currency get circulated immediately with the new monarch's portrait?

Answer 1

When King George VI died, coins (paper money didn't have the monarch on it at the time) with the Queen's portrait were in circulation by the next year. They continued minting George VI coins for a while after his death.

Answer 2

You must be quite young to need to ask. The old coins keep circulating.

When I was growing up in the 1950's, we used coins with the heads of five different British monarchs on them. Copper halfpennies and pennies had either young Victoria (1860-92), old Victoria (1892-1901), Edward VII (1902-10), George V (1911-36), George VI (1937-52) or Elizabeth (1953 onwards).

It seems that the monarch's head as of January 1 is used for each complete year, so the new one will come out for the year after accession to the throne.

Answer 3

Economics will survive while a fantasy and (hopefully) useless drag on the average "commoner" dies a long-overdue death.

The "royal family" are massively and artificially-privileged non-producers feeding off of the average Brit.  They should be cut off from the public trough!

Answer 4

Until the size of the coins were changed, victorian florins and shillings were still legal tender (10p and 5 p respectively). Just as stamps have no expiry date, neither do coins unless the currency changes (or as happened the size of the coins changes).

Answer 5

The currency willl gradually change. For example, if Queen Elizabeth plans to step down in 2010, the currency starts to change in around 2008. The only way to collect the old money (Those with Queen Elizabeth's Face on) is when people deposit money into a bank. If one of those coins has the face of Queen Elizabeth, the bank will just melt them. As soon as one of the coins are melted, another (without Queen Elizabeth's face) will be made.

Answer 6

After the proper time is up, meaning when the currency would normally be replaced, just lilke here in the States.  Their treasury is always looking for ways to improve and find ways to keep their 'pounds' from being counterfeited.  This means they will likely have protraits of Charles on hand, in case.  Also, they will be working on 'pre-production' not the finished items, for new portraits, each new portrait will have to be approved for each coin.

Answer 7

The new currency would start the following year, and the old currency would remain in circulation until it wore out. Britain changed all its currency in 1971 so there is presently nothing older than that in use (and the 5, 10, and 50p coins have been reduced in size since then, with larger ones taken out of circulation). But before 1971 one could see coins of past monarchs still in use, just as one occasionally finds pre-1953 George VI pennies being spent in Canada.

Answer 8

First off I don't think she would step aside but in the event of her abdicating or dying (which is what I think she would do to renounce her title, lol) Great Britain would start circulating new currency with the new monarch as soon as possible. And currently it looks like the next one on the currency is the currently titled  Charles, Prince of Wales.