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Comment by acheron | Hacker News Reader

So is this a commemorative essentially non-circulating coin or do things like this get spent normally in the UK? I'm not familiar with Royal Mint commemoratives.

In the US, the mint releases a lot of commemorative coins that ostensibly and legally have a face value, but in fact will never be used as money. Contrasting with that are the state and national park quarters, which mostly circulate normally.

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Most of the coins made will circulate normally, although higher quality commemorative versions will also be available to buy.

Yeah, the US Mint does that as well with the circulating coins.

These circulate and you find them in your change.

Some people collect them by getting bulk change from their banks and searching through. Here's a youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrLpq9u90Ls

You get to see from this video that there are a load of these coins in the UK.

OK, so somewhat similar to the State Quarter program in the US.

Thanks for the comment. I haven't been to the UK for 20 years (sadly).. I do remember from back then the differing pound coins.

Many people "collect" the commemorative 50p coins, possibly in the same way people collected the state quarters in the USA. There are one or two released every year[1], and the number varies.

People seem to avoid spending them for a little while, show someone if it's one they've not seen before, and perhaps put them aside at home, but eventually spend them again.

[1] https://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/coin-design-and-...

Yeah, the article was light on details. They said you could buy an uncirculated coin for 10 pounds, which led me to believe some would ALSO be circulated, but it would have been nice information for them to include :)

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