Tiny Tuesday: Cuff links

Carolinav is keeping us on our toes with tricky challenges this month! Today she'd like "A treasured Tiny Object on a Special or Outrageous Background". Well I couldn't think of an outrageous background but I hope that this set of old pre-decimal coinage makes a special enough background for my treasured cuff links.

The "sixpence" cuff links were a gift from one of my brothers when I turned 60, so as they show the year I was born you can tell that it was a few years ago.

For those not in the UK (or those young enough not to remember!) we switched to decimal currency on 15th February 1971. Instead of having 12 pence to a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound, we switched to having 100 pence to a pound. School children nowadays don't know they're born - I remember having sums at school such as "37 pounds 13 shillings and threepence and a farthing x 53". (A farthing was 1/4 of an old penny but was discontinued some years before decimalisation). The half crown was worth 2 shillings and sixpence; a whole crown would be 5 shillings but they were  only minted for special occasions (eg the coronations).

If you're very observant you'll see that most of the coins in the background are dated 1967 but the penny is from 1966, the threepence from 1964 and the shilling is dated 1965. No shillings were minted in 1967 but I don't know why the other coins are from different years.