This urgent news may have passed you by, but the pound coin won’t be round for much longer. Money never sleeps and this month, to beat the counter-fitters, the Royal Mint is ditching billions of quids-worth of pound coins and bringing in a new twelve-sided currency.
Good-bye circles and hello dodecagons. We had to check with the boffins at Wikipedia who confirmed that the new shape (“twelve lines of reflective symmetry and rotational symmetry of order 12”), was not actually new at all.
Granny and Grandad will probably remember the Nickel and Brass Thruppney-bit, back in the days when a twelve-side 3p would buy you a copy of the Beano, sweeties and a bus ride home.
On its own the new pound coin won’t buy you any of those things any more, but worse, it won’t open-up the essentials of everyday life. What about all those vital things that need a round pound?
How will we get a trolley at Sainsbury’s? How will we get a locker at the gym or swimming pool?
I know. It’s a future too terrible to even imagine….
But don’t panic, Purple Patch is one step ahead of you already. We can now supply trolley-coin keyrings with your logo or brand, boldly emblazoned on the perfect quid-sized dodecagon.
“But what about the trauma of transition Georgie?!” I hear you cry. “What if the gym lockers take the old ones and Waitrose takes the new? How will we cope?”
Calm down, we can do both old rounders and new twelvers to help ease you through the pain of the change of loose change.
And what a smashing promotional idea that is. Why not send your staff or your customers an old-shaped one now, and a new-shaped one next month? Or both at the same time. It’ll remind them that you not only have your finger on the pulse of vital fiscal affairs (good business vibes), but also it shows that you care about helping them through tricky financial times.