UK News: New Royal Mint £1 coin

It all change today, even you loose change is set to change, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne revealed its time to update the £1 coin in an attempt to reduce its widespread counterfeiting.



The Royal Mint has developed world-leading anti-counterfeiting technology which will enable Her Majesty’s Treasury to modernise the United Kingdom’s circulating currency with the production of a brand new £1 coin.



The new coin which will use cutting edge technology will be introduced in 2017 following a public consultation over the summer. A public design competition to choose the design for the reverse side will follow.



In 1983 the £1 coin replaced the old one pound note and is now the most counterfeited of all the currency, with an estimated 45 million fake coind in circulation. As such its replacement by a new 12 sided coin, will aim to elimate counterfeiting.



The question is, as it goes out of circulation, who is going to get stuck with the 45 million coins which are currently illegal tender and which the average man can't tell the difference between?