more on tuppence

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C6703
From: catlady_de_los_angeles
Subject: Re: more on tuppence
Reply To: [Yahoo! #6693] Re: more on tuppence
Date: 8/12/00 11:29 am  (ET)

> I have in my possession letters dating from the 1950s in envelopes
bearing twopenny (pronounced tuppenny) stamps.

In the 1950s, US postage for a first-class letter was 3 cents. In
those day, the pound was worth something like $2.80 American (a shock
to my mother, who had grown up believing that a pound was worth five
dollars). I'm not good at arithmetic, but it seems that UK postage was
much higher than US postage ... I did a Web search in an attempt to find
out if I really remember 3 cent postage or am just imagining it (I was
born in November 1957 and postage went up to four cents, then five cents,
and I do remember eight cent stamps -- the Robert Indiana LOVE stamp was
an eight cent stamp) and found a lot of people saying they were putting in
their 'three cents worth', but not the information that I was looking for.

> Predecimalisation two pence was written 2d

d for 'denarius', the Roman coin who gave its name to 'dinero' and
'dinar'. The US old Mercury head dime with fasces on the back was
modelled on the Roman denarius. (L was librum, one pound (weight),
related to French 'livre' (also meaning 'book', a source of puns) and
Italian 'lira'.)

I had better luck Web searching for the value of a denarius:
"Small coins were pretty valuable then. Silver and gold were rare and
valuable metals and the coins were valued for the metal they contained. In
Greek and Roman times, silver coins the size of a dime that are common
today were worth a full day's pay for a laborer (and most workers were
laborers). So, that might be, say, $40 in today's money. You could
support yourself and a small family on that. You could buy enough wheat
for 25 pounds of bread or 10 pounds of olive oil (28,000 calories of
nutrition!) with one small silver coin (a denarius)."

Quite a come-down from that to one American dime or British Old Penny!

> That's my 26p worth (first class stamp)

33c. As far as I can tell, the US postage stayed at three cents for one
hundred years and then went up 11-fold in 40 years, with another increase
planned for next year.