Where can you exchange British pound coins for American?

[Big Daddy]

Can anyone tell me where I can exchange British pound coins for American money? The bank will only do currency? Thanks for the info.

 

Bob

[Conder101]

Great Britain. Go there, exchange the pound coins for pound notes, and then exchange the pound notes for American dollars. Then come back home.

 

Sorry, foreign exchange businesses don't do coins because of the cost of transporting them back for redemption.

 

Now if you have some of the counterfeit round pounds I might be interested. (Currently 2% of the pound coins in circulation in Great Britain are fakes.)

[Big Daddy]

How do I tell if they are counterfeit?

[jtryka]

I recall there are some FX machines around that take coins, the last one I saw was in the Portland Airport (Oregon, not Maine). Otherwise, I don't know of any places that exchange coins, I still have a few Swiss 5-franc coins, which are worth twice as much as a British pount coin.

[DC Dawg]

Great Britain. Go there, exchange the pound coins for pound notes, and then exchange the pound notes for American dollars. Then come back home.

If you don't have an amount divisible by 5 you may have to go to Scotland to do this. The lowest denomination of paper currency issued by the Bank of England is the 5-pound note. Only the Royal Bank of Scotland issues 1-pound notes that are accepted as legal tender by the Bank of England.

 

I wonder if you are near a Royal Bank of Scotland branch, like in New York, if they will take the pounds? Probably not!

 

Scott

[satootoko]

How do I tell if they are counterfeit?

When you take them to the bank in London they won't give you paper pounds if your coins are detectable as fakes.

[Big Daddy]

Well considering I live out here in Utah I don't think I will be just stopping in London to cash them in. Judging from the feedback nobody collects them so I will probably just give them to the neices and nephews to play with.

[bartlesvilleok]

At one time I had about 20 1-pound coins. I just sold them on ebay and got pretty much the exchange rate for them.

 

From talking to the buyer he is from England and makes 2 trips there a year. He looks on ebay for deals but says normally it purchases them for what the going rate is to avoid the fees with exchanging from dollars to pounds.

[cladking]

There are usually some classified ads in the back of World Coin News and similar papers offering to buy coin. These normally have US addresses and pay as high as 80% for some major countries and as low as 25% for others. Most European will be 70- 80%. You need a significant amount to make shipping costs worthwhile.

 

I just sell the coins to people visiting the country at a discount. They usually get a kick out of having some coins to spend and the coins tend to be older and higher grade so they can even attract some attention.

 

One time I was desparate and just mailed a bunch of coin to a coin dealer in Europe unsolicited because they were about to lose their legal tender status. I didn't do very well that time and got about 25c on the dollar considering postage. At least the coins didn't become poundage and served to make a few more Indian refrigerators.

 

I'd advise patience. I'd also advise that you try not to accumulate any of this stuff since it is hard to get rid of. I've never been able to get rid of yen and have a few hundred dollars of it. I see the stuff in junk boxes at 5 for a dollar and they are really hard to resist. The 100Y are worth $1.10 now days.

[Conder101]

The counterfeits typically have poorly formed reeding and edge inscriptions, often the reverse design is wrong for the date of the coin. There are several different reverse designs and the pound coins tend to rotate them through a different one each year and I think after two rotations the obverse design changes and they start rotating through the reverse designs again.)

 

If they aren't fakes then I think letting the nieces and nephews play with them is a great idea. Who knows they many get interested in collecting them.

[dooly]

I will change them for you for proof 1971 Halfs .. and as for the fakes i have just passed one off today for some coke cola to go with my V&C's tonight .. they say there are about 13,000.000 fakes in curculation in the uk at the moment

[Conder101]

Dooly if you get more fakes passed off to you I'd be interested in them at an advance over face plus postage. PM me and we'll discuss details.