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Difference between Pounds and Guineas?

R

RJohan

pfm Member
In older circumstances Brittish money is referred as either Pounds or Guineas. Was there any difference?
 
A Guinea was a "posh pound" and is still used as the currency for racehorse trading. It used to be a pound and a shilling, so is now £1.05.
 
Jamie said:
A Guinea was a "posh pound" and is still used as the currency for racehorse trading. It used to be a pound and a shilling, so is now £1.05.
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The shilling (the additional 5 pence) was historically the commission the trader made on the sale of the horse, I believe.
 
Twenty one bob. The BoE will introduce a Brexit guinea- at nineteen bob. Hand your pounds in and exchange them for Guineas. But don’t try to buy Toblerones with them, you’ll get an unpleasant surprise, unless you’re dieting of course.
 
I prefer the old student guinea, aka the cavers guinea, aka the hill walkers guinea which was a pound and a pint
 
Despite being around for centuries, the guinea must have been a pig in accountancy terms (;)). There used to be a golden guinea. I'm not sure if decimalisation (1971?) killed it off or whether it withered beforehand.
 
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
“Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.”
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me...

(A.E.Housman)
 
TheDecameron said:
Twenty one bob. The BoE will introduce a Brexit guinea- at nineteen bob. Hand your pounds in and exchange them for Guineas. But don’t try to buy Toblerones with them, you’ll get an unpleasant surprise, unless you’re dieting of course.
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Toblerone have abandoned the new shape and gone back to the original.

Hope for Brexit going the same yet!
 
Rockmeister said:
The guinea was once a gold coin. Not so the pound.
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Not so, the English sovereign was a gold coin worth twenty shillings, first issued in the the 15th c. James 1 reformed the currency and the gold pound coin was called a Unite, to celebrate the union of the English and Scots crowns. In 1663, the Guinea was first minted and it was originally worth one pound sterling, but the price of gold got out of kilter with the price of silver. In 1717, it was pegged at 21 shillings until 1814, although during the Napoleonic wars especially when bad news arrived gold tended to trade at a premium anyway. In 1814, the Guinea was officially abolished and a new coin, the British sovereign minted instead. That survived until WW1 depleted the U.K. gold reserves and we went off the gold standard. Sovereigns are still legal tender - in theory - well I’ll buy any you’ve got for a pound each anytime you want
 
AndrewM said:
Not so, the English sovereign was a gold coin worth twenty shillings, first issued in the the 15th c. James 1 reformed the currency and the gold pound coin was called a Unite, to celebrate the union of the English and Scots crowns. In 1663, the Guinea was first minted and it was originally worth one pound sterling, but the price of gold got out of kilter with the price of silver. In 1717, it was pegged at 21 shillings until 1814, although during the Napoleonic wars especially when bad news arrived gold tended to trade at a premium anyway. In 1814, the Guinea was officially abolished and a new coin, the British sovereign minted instead. That survived until WW1 depleted the U.K. gold reserves and we went off the gold standard. Sovereigns are still legal tender - in theory - well I’ll buy any you’ve got for a pound each anytime you want
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good googling, but the guinea was minted in gold, and the unite was a unite, not a pound, which name came into being in medieval times and was a weight of silver, not a coin. Most coins, if minted were minted in silver and continued that way until the Guinea was minted in gold in the 1660's. It was the Sovereign which replaced the guinea as a gold minted coin. The pound itself was either a weight of silver, or a cupro nickel coin in the UK. There was I read a gold Irish pound for a while. Is that the confusion?
 
Indeed it was, Marchbanks, and I have a few of them; they were pretty good, if memory serves. Very much doubt that you'd even get half a pint of Guiness (sp ?)for a guinea


Marchbanks said:
I’m sure that was a record label too. I think I’ve got a Thank Your Lucky Stars compilation on it somewhere. (If you are under 50, ask your parents.) Personally I prefer Draught Guineas.
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Rockmeister said:
good googling, but the guinea was minted in gold, and the unite was a unite, not a pound, which name came into being in medieval times and was a weight of silver, not a coin. Most coins, if minted were minted in silver and continued that way until the Guinea was minted in gold in the 1660's. It was the Sovereign which replaced the guinea as a gold minted coin. The pound itself was either a weight of silver, or a cupro nickel coin in the UK. There was I read a gold Irish pound for a while. Is that the confusion?
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Well, it depends on your definition of a pound coin, I agree the only named pound coin is the cupro nickel version, but the gold sovereign, certainly after 1814 anyway was worth 20 shillings and was effectively a pound coin. By the way, I of course checked dates on google, but was already aware of the history. My grandfather kept all the sovereigns he had in his purse on the day we went off the gold standard, and they have have come down through the family, I have two of them myself plus a 1/2 sov.
 
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