On 19 Jun, 11:55, "Dik T. Winter"  wrote:
> In article  Steve Fitzgerald  writes:
>
>  > In message , Neil Williams
>  >  writes
>  > >On another note, though, I would like to see the abolition of the 1p
>  > >and 2p coins as the Dutch have done with the 1 and 2 euro-cent coins.
>  > >There is hardly a need for them these days.
>  >
>  > Are they allowed to do that when they are valid elsewhere in the EU?
>
> The 1 and 2 cent coins are accepted but that is just about all.  Moreover,
> when paying in cash the total amount to pay is rounded to the nearest
> multiple of 5 cent (which is allowed *), so you will never receive 1 and
> 2 cent coins.
> --
> * And the rounding occurs even when you want to pay the correct amount using
> 1 and 2 cent coins.

When I was working at Sainsburys in 1984ish, ½(half)p coins stopped
being legal tender.  Deli and meat scales were still calculating to
the ½p, but staff were told to just ignore them and round down.

But here's the odd part ...

Staff were told that we could still accept ½p coins from customers,
but only in pairs.  This was strongly emphasised and always struck me
as bizarre.

Presumably Sainsburys had an arrangement whereby it could cash in all
its ½p coins by some deadline, but even if staff accepted them not in
pairs, the entire Sainsburys chain could only ever have been stuck
with one odd ½p if they ended up with an odd number overall.