What will happen to the bills and coins that circulate with the face of Elizabeth II?

First modification: 09/13/2022 – 18:35

Queen Elizabeth II first appeared on the money while she was still a princess. She was in 1935, when Canada’s $20 bill featured a little girl of just over eight years old, whose grandfather, King George V, ruled the British.

Canadian $20 bills were updated with a new portrait of the queen in 1954, a year after her coronation, and her image also began to appear on other currencies around the world, primarily in British colonies and countries of the Commonwealth.

Since then, Elizabeth II has been represented on billions of banknotes and coins, as a reminder of the colonial reach of the late British Empire.

In Britain, banknotes didn’t get his image until 1960, seven years after his coronation. It was then that the Bank of England was granted permission to use his image on paper money, starting with the one pound note.

Elizabeth II became the first monarch depicted on British banknotes, as coins alone have featured kings and queens for over a thousand years. With her death, King Carlos III will take her place, not only on the throne, but in the pockets.

A change that will take even years

It will take a while for the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries to turn monarchs into their money.

“Current banknotes with the image of Her Majesty the Queen will continue to be legal tender”Said the Royal Mint, the division of the Bank of England that manufactures them, in turn anticipating that more announcements will come when the official mourning period ends.

“Rather than hand over all current coins and notes, the process will be gradual and many of Queen Elizabeth II’s portrait coins will remain in circulation for many years,” according to Coin Expert, a coin research website.

Coins showing the new monarch, Carlos III, will show him facing left, replacing the queen’s right gaze, in keeping with the tradition dating back to the 17th century that mandates that kings be shown in profile and in the direction opposed to its predecessors.

Other countries are also preparing for the change of currencies

The Australian Government assured this Tuesday, September 13, that the image of King Charles III would not automatically replace that of Queen Elizabeth II on Australian five-dollar bills and that it could even be replaced by local figures.

Although the coins must bear the image of the British monarch, the federal deputy secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Leigh, stated that the image of the queen had been included by Elizabeth II’s own decision and not because of her status as monarch.

The Royal Australian Mint, the only producer of coins in the country, guaranteed that it will not issue coins with the effigy of the queen in 2023 and that the appearance of Carlos III will depend on the dialogue with the British authorities.

The Central Bank of Canada clarified, for its part, that its current $20 note, made of synthetic polymer, is designed “to circulate for years to come” and that “there is no legislative requirement to change the design within a period of time.” determined when there is a change of monarch”.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand explained, in turn, that it will issue all its stock of coins with the image of the queen before new ones with the image of Charles III come out.

The queen also appears on the $20 bill, which is made “infrequently” and there is “no plan to destroy stock or shorten the life of existing bills just because they feature the queen,” the bank concluded.

At some point, Queen Elizabeth II appeared on at least 33 different coins, more than any other monarch, an achievement highlighted by Guinness World Records.

His image still appears, in addition to these countries, in Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

The countries that no longer use the face of the queen

Other places in the world have stopped putting the face of Elizabeth II on their coins or bills. After Jamaica gained independence from Britain in 1962, its central bank was replaced with portraits of national heroes like Marcus Garvey.

Bermuda made a similar renewal, while Trinidad and Tobago changed it to a coat of arms after becoming a republic.

And Hong Kong dollars issued after Britain returned its colony to Beijing in 1997 show Chinese dragons and skyscrapers on the skyline of the Asian financial hub.

With AP and Reuters