The Treasury has denied that it has plans to phase out pennies and tuppences after it declined to order any copper coins from the Royal Mint this year. Unfortunately, the ongoing fall in cash purchases and the fact that the Treasury is a government department and therefore cannot be trusted as far as you can throw it means that fears of losing our smallest denomination coins have not been entirely allayed.
Moreover, the Treasury is run by people who were surely born aged 35 and therefore wouldn’t know that coppers are a part – a precious part – of childhood. They are the first coins to go in your Ladybird purse, to take an example not entirely at random; the pennies just right for a child’s hand, the tuppences’ weight and substance giving them a worth that far outstrips the mere face value, making you feel like a Rothschild.
Back in the day, of course, they could be straightforwardly exchanged for penny sweets – the clue was in the name – and if inflation has largely put paid to that particular delight, a collection of coppers still represents power and possibility to the very young, even if the terms of exchange are harder.
And they remain instrumental in the important endeavour of teaching a child to gamble. My own grandmother made sure all her children’s offspring had a bag of coins to their name so that they could be taught to play pontoon, Newmarket, three- and seven-card brag and master some rudimentary poker skills whenever she visited. Yes, we could have used matchsticks, or bits of paper or plastic counters from the Connect 4 set – but nothing focuses the mind like playing for real stakes.
Then there were the amusement arcades along, for us, Blackpool’s Golden Mile but available at all seaside resorts worthy of the name. They were originally called penny arcades, of course, because that was the staple coin for the slot machines, bagatelles, peep show machines (not that kind), sinister mechanical figures in glass cases that could tell your fortune that populated the glorious, fun-filled/vulgar venues that sprang up at the beginning of the 20th century.
Their cheap and cheerful approach continues to this day. Although the screeches, beepings and general electronic cacophony from the slot machines and video games (easily a pound or two for a go that lasts seconds and rewards you with tickets rather than cash – a resentful parent speaks) is usually deafening, oases remain in the form of tuppenny waterfalls.
You put your coin in, it tumbles through a peg-obstacle course and lands on a sliding steppe full of other coins. Eventually a wodge will accumulate and fall onto the next step, and if it happens on that one too, a waterfall – you see! – of coins will clatter into the waiting drawer, ready to be scooped up by eager tiny hands and fed in again until the machine has them all for ever and it’s time for a consolatory ice cream.
No coppers, no valuable lessons in the futility of gambling and no first visual metaphor for the zero sum game that is life.
In fact, without coppers there may be no understanding of sums whatsoever. 1p and 2p pieces are a valuable way of making maths meaningful to the young. “X plus Y” is boring. “If you had this much money and then had that much money, you would have more money!” is a much more engaging proposition. At school you may have to use plastic facsimiles of the real thing, but the real thing still needs to be out there.
They are good for science too. Drop a penny into a glass of salt and vinegar and see what happens when acetic acid meets copper oxide if you don’t believe me, baby! It’s quite addictive. Not as addictive as gambling, but probably more productive.
Small pleasures, but small pleasures make up most of life. We need to mint more, not let them fade away.