Rate of change of currency tokens

[mtbc]

Thinking about the changes that I recall in my time in Britain, we substantially redesigned the common denominations of notes at least once and recently have further new five-pound notes in circulation, we retired the one-pound note in favor of a coin that is now to be replaced with another coin, we dropped the half-penny altogether, shrunk the five- and ten-pence pieces, gained twenty-pence pieces, and probably other things I now forget. (I would be in favour of dropping the copper coins altogether.)

I wonder what happened in the US over the same period. Sure, we get various designs on what are essentially the same quarters, but anything else regarding the currency that people usually use from day to day? I wonder. I am thinking that I simply forgot something or that the changes were less radical: maybe we got a bit more color on some of the note designs but the size and feel remained the same? Dollar coins have been available for ages of course but people just do not seem to want to use them. Perhaps there has been less need for change, in both senses!

Update: In comments I mention forgetting the two-pound coin. Now I also read that the Bank of England intends a new ten-pound note this summer.

Comments

[goldibehr]

I can think of a few changes to USA currency.

The color purple was added to the $5 bill. The presidential portrait on many denominations is now larger in size. And security stripes have been embedded in the paper, which are visible if you hold the bill up to a light.

Going back further, the $2 bill was introduced in 1976, but you never see them used.

[mtbc]

Aha, thank you! It hadn't occurred to me that the $2 bill was introduced as anything other than collectible weirdness; perhaps it was intended to be more mainstream as I was indeed surprised to find that they are quite spendable in stores.

I can certainly believe that the big purple sans-serif 5 is a later addition: now I search online I find it happened maybe around when I lived in Rhode Island, I guess I just wholly forgot that bit of news. (Huh, I wonder if forms might want to know when I lived where, that'd take some thinking.) I'd certainly missed the increase in portrait size though.

I had imagined that changes would have to be made in the arms race against counterfeiting: thanks to your examples I guess they indeed were, just in a gentler way that didn't come along with major changes like shape or size. In countering forgery the new one-pound coin here will be bi-metallic which reminds me that I'd forgotten the introduction of the two-pound coin among my list of changes.

[mtbc]

Now I read online some more, there's also the optically variable ink: I'm thus reminded, I do remember tilting the bills and observing that effect for myself. It reminds me of those cars one very occasionally sees whose color changes with viewing angle. (Hmmm, I've seen those only in the US, never in the UK.)