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Comment by physicsguy | Hacker News Reader

It’s cool, but the circulation for these notes is really low - I only ever used to see £50 notes when working in a shop that sold timber to builders!

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Perhaps shows the state of Britain's economy/relative worth compared to the rest of the world, since I used them (true, only occassionally) late 90s/early 2000's, but they must be worth much much less now, due to inflation, not to mention that referendum thing. It's not because prices are low in Britain aka Treasure-Island, that's for sure!

$100 bills are more than common, for example, and similar (actually quite a bit more) in value.

Where would you even get a £50 note from? I've never seen a cash machine dispense them.

The cash machines at the Barclays at 67 Grand Parade, Green Lanes, Harringay do, or at least did recently. I'm not entirely sure why. The local shopkeepers are fortunately unfazed by them.

That's just what I'm saying though - if £50 ($65?) is still considered excessive value for a single note, it's perhaps a reflection on the relative wealth of Britons. I'm British but have been expatriated since early 2000s

Alternatively it can be a shift to cashless transactions for a bit larger sums.

No, we would usually take/be given a stack of twenties. If it’s too much to be in that then it would be a cheque or bank transfer. We’ve paid most handymen recently by agreeing to transfer money later.

Still used a lot in casinos, poker tables especially

A bank, I guess, if you can find one...

A large bank will give you one but I'm guessing the smaller branches don't bother holding £50 notes given that no one uses them for retail banking at least

Small branches absolutely have £50 notes.

They're really not that rare, about 9% of all notes in circulation, or 25% of the total value in circulation.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/banknote

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