The

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

decimal ten pence

coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order t ...

(often shortened to 10p in writing and speech) is a denomination of sterling coinage worth one-tenth of a pound. Its obverse has featured the profile of Queen Elizabeth II since the coin's introduction in 1968, to replace the florin (two shilling) coin in preparation for decimalisation in 1971. It remained the same size as the florin coin (which also remained legal tender) until a smaller version was introduced 30 September 1992, with the older coins being withdrawn on 30 June 1993. Four different portraits of the Queen have been used on the coin; the latest design by Jody Clark was introduced in 2015. The second and current reverse, featuring a segment of the Royal Shield, was introduced in 2008. The ten pence coin was originally minted from cupro-nickel (75% Cu, 25% Ni), but since 2012 it has been minted in nickel-plated steel due to the increasing price of metal. From January 2013 the Royal Mint began a programme to gradually remove the previous cupro-nickel coins from circulation and replace them with the nickel-plated steel versions. As of March 2014 there were an estimated 1,631 million 10p coins in circulation, with an estimated face value of £163.08 million. 10p coins are

legal tender Legal tender is a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment for any monetary debt. Each jurisdiction determines what is legal tender, but essentially it is anything which when offered ("tendered") in ...

for amounts up to the sum of £5 when offered in repayment of a debt; however, the coin's legal tender status is not normally relevant for everyday transactions.

Design

Obverse

To date, four different

obverse Obverse and its opposite, reverse, refer to the two flat faces of coins and some other two-sided objects, including paper money, flags, seals, medals, drawings, old master prints and other works of art, and printed fabrics. In this usage, ...

s have been used. In all cases, the inscription until 2015 was , followed by the year of minting. In the original design both sides of the coin are encircled by dots, a common feature on coins, known as beading. As with all new decimal currency, until 1984 the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by

Arnold Machin Arnold Machin OBE, R.A., FRSS (; 30 September 1911 – 9 March 1999) was a British artist, sculptor, and coin and postage stamp designer. Life Machin was born Stoke-on-Trent in 1911. He started work at the age of 14 as an apprentice china pa ...

appeared on the obverse, in which the Queen wears the 'Girls of Great Britain and Ireland' Tiara. Between 1985 and 1997 the portrait by

Raphael Maklouf Raphael David Maklouf (born 10 December 1937) is a British sculptor, best known for designing an effigy of Queen Elizabeth II used on the coins of many Commonwealth nations. Maklouf was born in Jerusalem, to a Jewish family; his father was S ...

was used, in which the Queen wears the

George IV State Diadem The George IV State Diadem, officially the Diamond Diadem, is a crown that was made in 1820 for King George IV. The diadem is worn by queens and queens consort in procession to coronations and State Openings of Parliament. It has been featured in ...

. On 30 September 1992 a reduced-size version of the 10 pence coin was introduced. The older and larger version of the coin was withdrawn from circulation on 30 June 1993. The design remained unchanged. From 1998 to 2015 the portrait by

Ian Rank-Broadley Ian Rank-Broadley FRBS (born 1952) is a British sculptor who has produced many acclaimed works, among which are several designs for British coinage and the memorial statue of Princess Diana at Kensington Palace in London unveiled on her 60th ...

was used, again featuring the

tiara A tiara (from la, tiara, from grc, τιάρα) is a jeweled head ornament. Its origins date back to ancient Greece and Rome. In the late 18th century, the tiara came into fashion in Europe as a prestigious piece of jewelry to be worn by women ...

, with a signature-mark below the portrait. As of June 2015, coins bearing the portrait by Jody Clark have been seen in circulation.

Reverse

Original Reverse Design

The original reverse of the coin, designed by Christopher Ironside, and used from 1968 to 2008, is a crowned lion (formally, ''Part of the crest of England, a lion passant guardant royally crowned''), with the numeral "10" below the lion, and either NEW PENCE (1968–1981) or TEN PENCE (1982–2008) above the lion.

Royal Shield Design

In August 2005 the Royal Mint launched a

competition Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, indiv ...

to find new reverse designs for all circulating coins apart from the £2 coin. The winner, announced in April 2008, was Matthew Dent, whose designs were gradually introduced into the circulating British coinage from mid-2008. The designs for the 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p and 50p coins depict sections of the Royal Shield that form the whole shield when placed together. The shield in its entirety was featured on the now-obsolete round £1 coin. The 10p coin depicts part of the first quarter of the shield, showing two of the lions passant from the Royal Banner of England, with the words TEN PENCE above the shield design. The coin's obverse remains largely unchanged, but the beading (the ring of dots around the coin's circumference), which no longer features on the coin's reverse, has also been removed from the obverse.

A to Z Design (Great British Coin Hunt)

In March 2018, new designs were released, one for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. Anne Jessopp, chief executive of the Royal Mint, described the designs as "iconic themes that are quintessentially British". The A to Z coins were confirmed to have individual mintage figures of 220,000 on 14 October 2019 - a total of 5,720,000 for all 26. *A –

Angel of the North The ''Angel of the North'' is a contemporary sculpture by Antony Gormley, located in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England. Completed in 1998, it is believed to be the largest sculpture of an angel in the world and is viewed by an estimated 33 m ...

*B – Bond... James Bond *C –

Cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

*D –

Double-decker bus A double-decker bus or double-deck bus is a bus that has two storeys or decks. They are used for mass transport in the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, Europe, Asia and also in cities such as Sydney; the best-known example is the ...

*E – English breakfast *F – Fish and chips *G –

Greenwich Mean Time Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, counted from midnight. At different times in the past, it has been calculated in different ways, including being calculated from noon; as a con ...

*H –

Houses of Parliament The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north ban ...

*I –

Ice cream Ice cream is a sweetened frozen food typically eaten as a snack or dessert. It may be made from milk or cream and is flavoured with a sweetener, either sugar or an alternative, and a spice, such as cocoa or vanilla, or with fruit such as ...

*J –

Jubilee A jubilee is a particular anniversary of an event, usually denoting the 25th, 40th, 50th, 60th, and the 70th anniversary. The term is often now used to denote the celebrations associated with the reign of a monarch after a milestone number of y ...

*K – King Arthur *L –

Loch Ness Monster The Loch Ness Monster ( gd, Uilebheist Loch Nis), affectionately known as Nessie, is a creature in Scottish folklore that is said to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is often described as large, long-necked, and with one or mor ...

*M –

Mackintosh The Mackintosh or raincoat (abbreviated as mac) is a form of waterproof raincoat, first sold in 1824, made of rubberised fabric. The Mackintosh is named after its Scottish inventor Charles Macintosh, although many writers added a letter ''k' ...

*N –

NHS The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

*O –

Oak tree An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...

*P –

Post box A post box (British English; also written postbox; also known as pillar box), also known as a collection box, mailbox, letter box or drop box (American English) is a physical box into which members of the public can deposit outgoing mail inten ...

*Q –

Queuing Queue areas are places in which people queue (first-come, first-served) for goods or services. Such a group of people is known as a ''queue'' (British usage) or ''line'' (American usage), and the people are said to be waiting or standing ''in ...

*R – Robin *S – Stonehenge *T –

Tea Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of ''Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and north ...

*U –

Union Flag The Union Jack, or Union Flag, is the ''de facto'' national flag of the United Kingdom. Although no law has been passed making the Union Flag the official national flag of the United Kingdom, it has effectively become such through precedent. ...

*V –

Village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...

*W –

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

*X – X marks the spot *Y – Yeoman Warder *Z –

Zebra crossing A zebra crossing (British English) or a marked crosswalk (American English) is a pedestrian crossing marked with white stripes (zebra markings). Normally, pedestrians are afforded precedence over vehicular traffic, although the significance of ...

Status as legal tender

10p coins are

for amounts up to and including £5. However, in the UK, "legal tender" has a very specific and narrow meaning which relates only to the repayment of debt to a creditor, not to everyday shopping or other transactions. Specifically, coins of particular denominations are said to be "legal tender" when a creditor must by law accept them in redemption of a debt. The term does not mean - as is often thought - that a shopkeeper has to accept a particular type of currency in payment. A shopkeeper is under no obligation to accept any specific type of payment, whether legal tender or not; conversely they have the discretion to accept any payment type they wish.

Mintages

''Mintage figures below represent the number of coins of each date released for circulation. Mint Sets have been produced since 1982; where mintages on or after that date indicate 'none', there are examples contained within those sets.'' ; Machin portrait ;Maklouf portrait ; Rank-Broadley portrait ; Jody Clark portrait

References

External links

Royal Mint – 10p coinTen Pence, Coin Type from United Kingdom
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ten Pence (British Coin) Coins of the United Kingdom Currencies introduced in 1968 Ten-cent coins