What's that in old money?

Recently I was reminded of my inevitable aging in a new way.

Commentary on getting old is not an original topic. Birthday cards joking about age abound, grey hairs arrive, and I swore I’d never grow too old for pop music but by the curly left horn of the great Jipply Gargler what the blazes is that ear crud the kids listening to these days? I mean, the fact that so much of today’s pop music uses samples of 80’s pop music proves that it was better back then surely?

Anyway I met a guy that sold hand-made wooden toys and—in a completely unconnected and somewhat baffling diversification—key rings made from old coins. He takes old coins, drills a little hole in them, puts them on a tiny chain, and arranges them in rows by decade.

Some were very cool. There were huge pennies from the 1800s when they put more metal into a penny than is used today in a hatchback; and there were coins so old the monarch effigy is male (though even if the queen were that bald it wouldn’t be immortalized on a coin). Many, of course, were of denominations or designs that no longer exist—like the three penny piece or the shilling.

But on the top row were coins that had no right being there. For example there were five pence pieces exactly like the ones in circulation when I was growing up. Ten pence pieces like the ones I used to balance on my elbow and then try to catch with the hand of the same arm without dropping any. What were these coins doing there? Suddenly, the no-longer-shiny-but-nothing-that-a-good-dollop-of-steak-sauce-wouldn’t-clean-up penny dropped. The coins given me as pocket money are not only defunct but are being made into novelty key rings. And looking at them were spotty, overly self-conscious teenagers giggling at the coins they used to use ‘back then.’

How dare they. 'back then’ indeed. I wanted to shout at them “Without ‘back then’ you wouldn’t have anything to plagiarize for what you define as pop music you melodically challenged generation of sample saturated, flossy eared, one hit wonder loving, flash in the pan dreamers. I’m a gen Xer, I used bigger currency and was proud of it! You, history will remember as the generation that let money slip through its fingers because it was so small and fiddly. Look, these coins on the lower rows are older and even bigger—aren’t they funny!”

So now when people ask ‘how old are you?’ I can't help but know I’m old enough that I can no longer use my magic disappearing coin box with the coins currently in use, even if I wanted to. (And I do).