New one pound coin

Starting from Tuesday march 28th , English people says goodbye to something very important for them: the old round pound coin !

It's the first time the pound coin has been changed in more than 30 years. Indeed , The £1 coin has been in circulation since April 21, 1983.

The old coin became a problem as they were easily illegally copied which mean that lots of worthless pound coins have been in circulation. Apparently one in thirty £1 coins in circulation today is a counterfeit!

The new coin was announced in 2014 and the Royal Mint, who create the coins, said that this one will be "the most secure coin in the world" making the pound coins harder to replicate.

The new £1 coin is no more a round coin. It’s a twelve-sided coin. It’s thinner and lighter, but slightly larger than the current coin. It is made of two metals ( gold and silver ) like the current £2 coin introduced in 1998 and has a new design. The coin design came from David Pearce, who won the competition to design the new coin #yourpoundcoin at the age of 15 !

The fifth coin portrait of Her Majesty the Queen is still featured on the coin’s ‘heads’ side. It was designed by Royal Mint coin designer Jody Clark. Jody is the first Royal Mint engraver to be chosen to create a royal coinage portrait in over 100 years. His design was selected from a number of anonymous submissions to a design competition.

No big surprise for the second face of the 1 pound coin: we can still see the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, who's been the monarch in the UK and other commonwealth realms/ countries since 1952, on it. Yet, this portrait has been (updated)/ brought up to date 5 times because of the longevity of E's reign: that is 63 years, a duration that may soon break up the record (previously) established by Queen Victoria, who had been the sovereign for 63 years and 7 months.

The reverse side of the coin the ‘tails’ shows the English rose, the Welsh leek, the Scottish thistle and the Northern Irish shamrock emerging from one stem within a royal coronet.

The design on the 'tails' side of the coin features four emblems to represent each of the nations of the United Kingdom - the English rose, the leek for Wales, the Scottish thistle, and the shamrock for Northern Ireland - emerging from a single stem within a crown.

The coin has got a lot of security features. It includes a hologram-like image which alternates between '£' symbol and '1' when the coin is seen from different angles. It has very small lettering on the lower inside rim on both sides of the coin. There's also a secret high-security feature built into the coin itself.

It also has milled edges and micro-lettering, with the words “one pound” repeated on the heads side and the production year on the tails side..

It features a gold-coloured outer ring, a silver-coloured inner ring and an image that changes from a "£" symbol to the number "1" when seen from different angles.

Businesses have been told about the new coins and that they need to prepare. However, some equipment, such as vending machines, self service checkouts and parking ticket payment machines, needs

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