I recently took out £200 in two-pound coins, as part of a plan to make carrying large sums of money around with me sufficiently uncomfortable that I'd stop doing it. In particular, if I've just put three two-pound coins in my pocket to buy lunch at the canteen, I don't need to have a wallet, and so I don't have my credit-card readily accessible.
I spent some of them, and counted the rest. Two weeks later, I did the same again; in early January 2012 I did the same again and managed not to spend any before counting them:
| Coin type | 15 October (93) | 29 October (87) | 7 January (100) | 25 February (99) |
| Normal Isaac Newton gears | 80 | 69 | 80 | 87 |
| Darwin-and-ape [2009] | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Thistle-and-portcullis jigsaw [2007] | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Rocket steam-engine [2004] | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Paddington station arches [2006] | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Rugby World Cup [1999] | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Broken-chain abolition-of-slave-trade [2007] | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Auld Lang Syne [2009] | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| Brunel's mighty hat [2006] | 0 | 3 | 5 | 1 |
| St Pauls [2005] | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Marconi [2001] | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Gunpowder plot wheel-of-symbols [2005] | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| DNA [2003] | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| Commonwealth Games (Scotland) [2002] | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Florence Nightingale hands [2010] | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
I think the little-locomotive £2 coin is about the best piece of currency ever issued.
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| An iPhone 4S costs three treasure-chests like this |
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fivemack
