PENNY pinchers may be pleased to hear that 1p and 2p coins are here to stay but is there actually anything you can spend them on?
Chancellor Philip Hammond revealed this week that the small change isn’t going anywhere after branding the coins “obsolete” last year and threatening to ditch them.
Alamy
It comes after campaigners highlighted that change is often needed in rural areas and by those who don’t like using new fangled technology.
But did you know that 1p and 2p coins actually cease to be legal tender if you spend more than 20p worth of either in one go.
Now, it’s not as simple as shops refusing to serve you if you push 21 1p coins over the counter to them.
In actual fact, shops and other sellers can decide whether or not to accept the pennies themselves.
What is legal tender?
COINS and cash are legal tender throughout the UK for the following amount, according to the Royal Mint:
- £100 – for any amount
- £50 – for any amount
- £20 – for any amount
- £2 – for any amount
- £1 – for any amount
- 50p – for any amount not exceeding £10
- 20p – for any amount not exceeding £10
- 10p – for any amount not exceeding £5
- 5p – for any amount not exceeding £5
- 2p – for any amount not exceeding 20p
- 1p – for any amount not exceeding 20p
Legal tender simply means that someone in debt can’t be successfully sued for non-payment if they pay a court in legal tender.
So now that you know the rules, what can you actually buy with your hard earned pennies?
The truth is very little these days, we couldn’t find anything on eBay for just 1p and we couldn’t even see any sweets for less than 20p on any of the major supermarkets’ websites.
But Amazon hasn’t let us down. Here are five surprising items you can spend a penny – or two – on.
This Pay-As-You-Go Sim for the Three Mobile network costs just 1p and comes with free delivery.
It gives you calls for 3p a minute, texts for 2p, and a MB of data for 1p.
The Sim apparently fits in any unlocked 3G or 4G phone and buyers mostly seem really pleased with their purchase.
One shopper wrote: “What can I really say, except the buyer is selling at a loss – postage costs are a lot more than product itself, so really satisfied.”
But we found that you could get the same Sim completely for free via the Three Mobile website.
This EE Sim card differs to the Three Mobile one above as once you’ve got it, you need to upload £10 worth of credit and then it gives you unlimited texts, 100 minutes of calls and 2GB of data for 30 days.
But some shoppers say it comes loaded with £1 worth of credit to begin with.
However, buy directly from EE and you only have to pay for the £10 credit saving you one penny on the Sim.
This ring promises to be a “sweet gift” for your lover, family, friends and somewhat oddly, your coworkers.
But shoppers do warn that the ring comes up small and sadly you will have to pay 95p in delivery fees as the item is sold by a third party provider.
We couldn’t find the ring any cheaper elsewhere though.
These silver stud earrings in the shape of a heart with a purple crystal set in the centre are a bargain at 1p.
Again, you do have to pay 99p for postage but that’s still £1 all in, and we couldn’t find earrings for less elsewhere online.
Now, this is a good one to stock up on now for Christmas given it costs just 2p.
The brooch is made of metal and features coloured crystals as the baubles.
It’s 6.5cm by 4.4cm in size but I’m afraid you will have to shell out 99p on delivery.
The keeping of 1p and 2p coins comes as the end of free cash machine withdrawals looms as almost 1,700 started charging this year.
One British town has NO cash machines with residents forced to cough up £3.50 every time they want money.
Part of the problem is that the fees ATM providers receive from banks was cut in July 2018 by network operator LINK, making it less profitable for them to offer the service for free.
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