It IS of particular interest as the design was ‘tweaked’ a year or so later with minor revisions, mainly colouring. The original ’first’ issues from 1970 are more scarce and therefore more valuable.

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GARRYPHILIP@reddit

Yes, the William Shakespeare £20 banknote was first issued in 1970.

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sporkofsage@reddit

As someone born in the 80s, thank you. My initial reaction was "what the shit is this? It doesn't even have the foil thingy through it"

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leoedin@reddit

£250 if it’s from 1970.

It’s mad to think how much value in cash people used to carry. We don’t really use £50 notes - let alone if there was a £250 note!

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Defiant-Dare1223@reddit

I think it's more mad the other way.

I moved to Switzerland and have used a 1000 CHF note that's worth £900. I currently have a 200 euro note in my wallet.

100 dollar bills are commonly used in the U.S.

The UK has bizarrely low top denominations.

If credit cards didn't become a thing we'd need bigger notes by now.

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The highest we have is £50. And you literally cannot spend them anywhere - even the big supermarkets get jittery about them. Their only real use is transferring large amounts of money between banking institutions - and even that’s on the wane as more and more goes straight electronic.

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secretwelshy@reddit

Technically there is a £100 banknote from RBS, and don’t forget about the £100 million banknote lol

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Opening_Succotash_95@reddit

There are £100 notes as well, I think only Scottish notes but I've occasionally had people pay in them when I worked in retail.

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Accomplished-Sir7724@reddit

You probably caught a few downvotes as you do get £100 banknotes in the UK. I’ve had them a couple of times for birthdays.

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Back-Alley-Cat-@reddit

Coins:

I do agree with you, I have a folder full of parking apps. The benefit I have found however is it makes getting a receipt for expenses reasons loads easier as one gets emailed to me. I can also just park at my local station, jump on the train and pay for my parking - no running about parking meter queuing while the train rolls into the station like I used to (missed a fair few trains when the meter in the carpark I used was broken and had to run to the other one on the other side of the station to get a ticket)

An there was heavily lobbying to get rid of 50s.

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Panceltic@reddit

why has this been downvoted?

Maybe because there are £100 banknotes in Scotland and Northern Ireland

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Splodge89@reddit

Good luck spending those in England or wales though…

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Tetracropolis@reddit

why has this been downvoted?

kai_enby@reddit

Probably depends where you are in the US, I was just in NYC and most stores had signs up saying no bills above $20 would be accepted. I spent my hundreds in a tattoo shop, and successfully spent 2 fifties but the rest I asked my hotel to break into small notes as they would have been hard to spend

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Kiss_It_Goodbyeee@reddit

In those days you didn't have a wallet full of £20s. Remember we used to have £1 notes as well so you had 1, 5 or 10 notes on you typically.

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sandersonprint@reddit

In Jersey and Guernsey we still have £1 notes!

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Opening_Succotash_95@reddit

Technically they're still around in Scotland as well, but I've not seen one in probably 20 years.

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sandersonprint@reddit

PikeyMikey24@reddit

You don’t understand

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Ricky_Martins_Vagina@reddit

I've usually got a couple hundred on me but don't have much reason to carry £500, not in the UK at least.

Big purchases would often have been hire purchase in those days.

Recently clearing out my Gran's old stuff, found various hire purchase contracts from the mid-50s. Starter furniture sets worth multiple hundreds of pounds at the time, some stuff was super expensive!

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Splodge89@reddit

Bankers drafts were often used if the money was in a bank account (indeed, they still exist, but they’re uncommon). Other than that it was wads of cash. When you could buy a house for like £2k, it really wasn’t as many notes as it is today.

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Traichi@reddit

It’s mad to think how much value in cash people used to carry.

I mean we carry £1,000 smartphones in our pockets just fine.

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kh250b1@reddit

Mate, when i left school in 75 i took home 15 a week. I wasnt getting one of those in my pay packet to carry “mad” amounts of money around

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Worldly-Employer-745@reddit

If you’re going that far back, there would have been few people regularly carrying around £20+ in their wallet. That was about an average week’s wage. They were that big because they were very important notes.

You can either exchange it at the bank of England or sell it to a collector, these have been pulled from circulation for years so you won't be able to use it to actually buy anything.

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KeyLog256@reddit

Yep, in fact London is the only place you can use it, because only the Bank of England will exchange notes that old.

Most banks (if you can find one that's still open) will exchange notes one, maybe two issues previously, but any older than that the BoE is your only option.

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PeteyMcPetey@reddit

because only the Bank of England will exchange notes that old.

How do you guys tell how old the bills are,? Just curious as I didn't see a date on the front of the note.

Or is it just because the queen is so young that you can tell?

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7MTB7@reddit

Our money is made of a plastic type polymer now rather than paper, so that's an easy way to tell this is old.

That being said, this note in question is ooooooooold. I reckon it was taken out of circulation at least 30 years ago now. There's been at least two versions between this one and the polymer ones we have now

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GARRYPHILIP@reddit

This £20 note was in circulation from 1970 until 1993. It portrayed William Shakespeare on its reverse side.

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BlockCharming5780@reddit

Dead royals are still technically heads of state

I'm assuming they will just write off the notes in their annual balance sheet.

Central banks are constantly creating new notes and adding them into circulation, so it won't be the case that they are replacing those specific notes like for like.

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LordEmostache@reddit

I'll have the notes if they don't want them

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PM-me-your-cuppa-tea@reddit

Yeah, certain Banks and organisations can send notes to the BoE to be exchanged. Other Banks will send to those Banks.

Fun fact I learnt when I worked at Debden (where they print notes)

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BlueTrin2020@reddit

Must be funny to see pallets of notes lol

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skawarrior@reddit

Our town has a 'secret' money burning plant. I've known people who work there who say you quickly get used to seeing literal millions of pounds per week. They see it only as rubbish as it's all bound for the incinerator eventually.

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Johnnycrabman@reddit

Sighthill in Edinburgh?

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skawarrior@reddit

Nah way further down south in a non-descript town in the Midlands.

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deleted_by_reddit@reddit

[removed]

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AutoModerator@reddit

It looks like you've written the pound sign (£) after the number 10, but it should be written before the number like this: £10.

^(I am an annoying bot, so please don't be offended.)

Thank you, I appreciate it.

I wasn’t very clear, but I was only in Debden for 2 days then back to normal!

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slophiewal@reddit

Yup

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ilikecocktails@reddit

Can I just go to my high street bank? I have some old notes I’ve been meaning to sort out for years, 5/10/20/50s etc just sitting there as they’re out of date

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DreamingDrummer60@reddit

You can change up to £200 at a Post Office.

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crucible@reddit

Could even come out with £400! :P

AboutToMakeMillions@reddit

Keyword here is customer, i.e if you don't have an account with them they will not exchange it for you.

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slophiewal@reddit

Yes, I’ve acknowledged that’s why OP potentially can’t change the note however the comment I responded to was simply stating banks won’t change these anymore, which they will :)

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trikristmas@reddit

Yeah, but you need to be a customer. Or did you just change notes for anyone? I had some old notes from family abroad which needed changing out. Tried two branches which were near me for various banks and neither took the notes. Said they only do it for a current customer, so I had to go to my own bank specifically.

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slophiewal@reddit

Yep, I did say for a customer.

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If they were executor of the will they could get into trouble for not maximising the value of the estate.

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PuzzleheadedLow4687@reddit

Most banknotes were very common and therefore of little value to a collector. There were millions in circulation, and probably still is a large supply of most banknotes that would have been in circulation for the past 100 years or more.

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Awordofinterest@reddit

Our notes state "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of £5, £10, £20, £50 etc"

This is a fixed figure, no matter the value - it's fixed, to a bank - To a collector, it's art. The value would be whatever they are willing to pay.

Would it be allowed for you to debit your current account for the value of the fivers

The bank wont give you old notes. So if you wanted to keep them, just keep them? They will not add the value to your bank balance though just because they have seen you have it.

I've worked in shops, the say you can't take old notes, yet you can, quite easily. You usually get reimbursed (through insurance, Usually, the banks insurance, after a few months) for fraudulent notes that you might send to get banked.

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Wretched_Colin@reddit

I’m talking about a bank teller who is working and a customer comes in to hand over a £5 note.

richdrich@reddit

Has anyone actually visited the BoE to change a note?

It might be an interesting place to see the inside of?

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Interesting-Bus9989@reddit

Yeah this is totally untrue! I work in a bank at the moment and we would happily exchange these notes

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Arsewhistle@reddit

This comment is proof that redditors will upvote absolutely any nonsense

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Blaueveilchen@reddit

I was not aware that these kind of notes don't circulate anymore. I hardly use any cash.

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An Italian friend of mine came to the UK after over 10 years with this exact note and wanted to pay a round of drinks at the pub. Hilarious scene 😂

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InfectedByEli@reddit

Oh no! I've been out-pedanted.

I’ve never seen this before.

I really don’t understand people behaving like this. Or worse like my aunt who isn’t even old (51?) and she brags about how much cash she has in the house and how much she makes but she’d do things that make her look poor.

So she avoided paying when she’s dining with her kids, her husband (now ex) and my parents when it was her turn. When it was my parents turn to pay the night before however, she’d order really expensive items like lobster or duck. Or she’d get my cousin to buy her supplies for her salon, but not pay him. He asked nicely about the payment then she said my grandma would pay for it (like why????). Then gets mad at him afterwards. Considering she’s always bragging about how much money she has, she should have paid him and some more for all the trouble.

She also brings up shit from 20 years ago to rant about. Everyone avoids her like a plague 😵

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fsv@reddit

I went to the US in 2014, my parents mentioned they had a bunch of American dollars from when they'd last been there - in the late 1980s. So it might have been something like that.

Probably just not from the UK and either them or a relative visited yonks ago and kept it from then. Slight possibility of being from a country with a very unstable currency where people try and buy foreign currency because it keeps its value (like Argentina).

I worked in a supermarket, and I would accept Kiwi 20p coins. I would then swap them out when we counted up the till at night and keep them. I even accepted farthings as 1p coins, cos I liked them.

You would be surprised how much some coin collectors will pay for old or unusual coins. The same goes for old notes. Worst comes to worst, you can exchange notes for face value at a bank so you don’t lose anything if they are “no longer valid tender”.

Holy shit, I thought the dinosaurs were extinct?

That things ancient 😂

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DandyLionsInSiberia@reddit

According to the bank of England "withdrawn banknote" database, The above iteration of banknote was issued originally in 1970 and remained the standard bank of England £20 note until around 1991..(It ceased to be legal tender in 1993)

They're selling for around 40-70 GBP (depending upon condition) on eBay..

Setting aside the complete phasing out of more recent paper notes in favour of polymer notes.

The above ceased to be legal tender 30 years ago. No shop or business has accepted it as an acceptable mode of payment for over three decades..

Don’t trade it in, sell it online.

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Pattoe89@reddit

You an have it exchanged for a £20 at a bank but it's best kept at this point or sold to a collector.

£20 will buy you next to nothing in London. Maybe a shop will let you look at one of its products for a few seconds for £20.

Your note is a ‘Series D’ £20. From what I can see on the Bank of England website, this must date from the period 1970-1984. Although that design was issued until 1993, after 1984 it was issued with a visible metal strip as an anti-counterfeiting feature. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/withdrawn-banknotes

You can exchange them, but you will have to do so either at one of the 47 Post Office branches that do exchange rather than deposit into an account. You do seem to be able to exchange by post also. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/exchanging-old-banknotes

AubergineParm@reddit

Keep it! That’s collectible now and not useable in any store.

You could trade it in at a bank, but it’s worth more than face value now so many as well hang onto it.

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