WOMEN COIN MONEY

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXX, Issue 13647, 21 May 1942, Page 6

WOMEN COIN MONEY

SAVE PENNIES FOE BOMBS

Women are making coins in Biitain’s Royal Mint for the firs': time in its centuries of history. Now numbering nearly a quarter of the total work people, they have learnt the process of coining backwards. First they were put on the “over-looking machine, with its slowly moving belt on which the newly-minted coins are spread out for inspection. Then the women went to the presses, which in one operation impress the blank coinage on both sides and. in some coins, mill round the edge.

A coin which is helping to win the war is the 12-sided threepenny piece of nickel-brass. It contains less than a quarter of the metal in three pennies. and their copper is needed for munitions. No pennies have been struck for United Kingdom use since June, 19 40, which at ' that time meant a saving of over SOO tons of copper a year. But last year saw the minting of 60,000.000 nickelbrass tlireepennies, the highest total in any year since they were first issued in 1937, when 4 5 million were struck. In 19 3S, 15 million were issued; in 1939, 5,600,000; and in 1940, 13,000,000. There are now about 150,000,000 of them in circulation, compared wtih about 3,000 million bronze coils and 1,3 5 0 silver coins. The brass threepenny was given its distinctive shape and size because the new coin had to be larger than the tiny silver threepenny, which was becoming unpopular, yet had to be sharply differentiated from the larger coins. When first issued it was received as a great curiosity, and millions went out of circulation to collectors.