Withdrawal from circulation £20 and £50 notes

While looking up something on another thread (https://en.numista.com/forum/topic123009.html for reference) I saw that the pre-polymer i.e. paper £20 and £50 notes are only being accepted until 30  September this year.

I'm curious about the efficiency of this retirement process - how many bills end up worthless in someone's wallet?  Also, does this have any impact on collecting?

I'm not a banknote collector myself, so apologies for the newbie question.  I just got curious thinking about what the side effects are from such a process of retiring a particular note.

Best,

Bill 

waisaacs

While looking up something on another thread (https://en.numista.com/forum/topic123009.html for reference) I saw that the pre-polymer i.e. paper £20 and £50 notes are only being accepted until 30  September this year.

 

I'm curious about the efficiency of this retirement process - how many bills end up worthless in someone's wallet?  Also, does this have any impact on collecting?

 

I'm not a banknote collector myself, so apologies for the newbie question.  I just got curious thinking about what the side effects are from such a process of retiring a particular note.

 

Best,

Bill 

I would say there would be little impact on the hobby other than perhaps a flood of the same notes emerging on eBay in the next few years. But higher denominations are a tough sell so I doubt it will amount to much unless there's a demand for the notes (due to their prefix, etc). Perhaps an uptick in social media posts as seen on IG & Reddit?

In Canada, the banks were very pro-active in retiring our paper currency, so our $50 & $100 disappeared quite quickly after our polymer hit the streets.  People hoarded these denominations all the time.  

The Bank of Canada never said "boo" about them until a few years ago when it announced that the $1, $2, $25, $500 & $1000 would be obsolete & no longer have legal tender status.  This meant that retailers could refuse to accept them but they would be accepted by local bank branches (who'd send them back to the central bank).  So many people turned in their hoarded obsolete denominations in the past 2-3 years & we have seen quite a few notes from “Dean” a collector who posts his finds on this thread on the CPMF.  (BTW: I have asked quite a few tellers if they'd let me buy notes from their damaged pouch of returns & they've always looked at me like I was asking to spend a day in their vaults- like I had two heads, so how “Dean” accesses these notes is a complete mystery to me.  Perhaps he's a retired bank employee).

But we never saw any $25 or $500 appear (still super scarce & command 4 to 6 figure prices).  Dean's finds have mostly been well circulated uncollectible currency IMO.  The only thing that garnered much attention were the old collectible standards (like the odd Devil's Face or rare $10 prefix from the 1970's). I often suspected he added his own notes to his “finds” to live up his thread!  I would expect the same case for collectors trying this in GB b/c collectible banknotes are generally not very common.  You've got to sift through thousands to find a "gem."  

Collectors will be still after notes in pristine condition & ones with tough first or change-over prefixes (errors, special # etc).

In England your bills do not end up worthless after they are withdrawn from circulation.

You may not be able to buy something from a shop with an old paper £50 note (frankly you would have struggled to do that before withdrawal).

You can exchange them at the Post Office, or at your Bank for new bills… and you can always take/send them to the Bank of England for exchange. (It's similar in other countries of the UK)

So, bills in excellent condition, especially early serial numbers tend to go up in value, a paper £50 is still worth its face value, plus a premium for collectors because it will only get harder to find one.

I suspected that there must be a mechanism to exchange indefinitely.  Not very good public policy to say that your money no longer has value.  Though I know the US had various shenanigans a century or so ago regarding gold and silver certificates, but that's different from declaring a note worthless.

In the U.K. all money that was withdrawn can be exchanged indefinitely so it is possible to exchange pre decimal money at a bank or post office but most likely that happened less often as the years went on after decimalisation, same with the withdrawn of the round pound coin, paper 5, 10 pound notes and the upcoming £20 and £50 notes. these would be commonly exchanged for the months after the date but as time goes on it will become less frequent.

In my opinion I’ll only exchange them if they have no additional value for example if they are in very poor condition.

waisaacs

I suspected that there must be a mechanism to exchange indefinitely.  Not very good public policy to say that your money no longer has value.  Though I know the US had various shenanigans a century or so ago regarding gold and silver certificates, but that's different from declaring a note worthless.

After my long winded reply, 2 collectors commented on how retired Pound notes can be exchanged indefinitely at their UK banks. 

It is the same here in Canada.  Just b/c the BoC has used the word “obsolete” (& rather than “retired”) for paper denominations no longer issued ($1, $2, $25, $500 & $1000) does not mean that they no longer have value. You can exchange all these obsolete notes at any bank (which in turns sends them back to the central bank). There are no deadlines, no rush to bring these notes into the banks, even though people have been bringing their older notes in recently. This could be a result of Covid, lack of employment or other factors (who knows?)  [On a side note: It is probably unfortunate that the BoC used the term “obsolete” b/c I still see US collectors comment that a CDN $1 or $2 no longer has value- likely b/c since Obsolete US banknotes- no longer had value, &  they've transferred this notion to our currency which continues to have value]. That is a misunderstanding I wish to clear up (your $2 note still has value to the Bank of Canada). Whether your note has collector value is another topic entirely.

Removal of legal tender status simply means that no retailer must take them. However, this can also be misleading, since in actual fact, no retailer must take any currency offered them. They have the right to refuse payment as they see fit (& if they decide not to sell you an item).