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12.6.07

A Coin has no memory.


Decimalisation Day. February 15th 1971. Out with the pounds shilling and pence, the end of the half-crown, and the beginning of the end for the giant pennies, the chicken pingins. Also the day I was born.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

When the coinage was first designed in the early 1920s, and animals were chosen as representative of the wealth of Ireland as an agricultural nation, the original design for the bull was deemed too 'virile' and had to be 'toned down'....final emasculation coming with the euro and the silly decision to just keep the harp rather than the horses, bulls, woodcocks etc...

Anonymous said...

original designs
http://www.geocities.com/eirecoins/metcalfe.htm

Paul Rowley said...

That's hilarious! The bull being too virile. I wonder what category that put Joyce, Yeats and the nun in then on the short lived paper punts of the 90's?

Paul Rowley said...

thanks for the link to the original designs. I'd forgotten all about the piglets.

That bull was seriously virile in the originals!