Originally Posted by
phonestand
I was just about to ask about that.... I have two kinds of one Pound coins.... some old and some new... I guess the easiest thing to do will be to give them to my friend who lives in the UK?
Originally Posted by
dddc
If you are visiting London and go to Bank and then the Bank of England, you can change any old currency for new there. But that's if you, or your friend are going to it. Otherwise those charity boxes you see at airports might be an easy way to make some use of them.
Coins cannot be exchanged at the Bank of England (and neither can old currency that isn't Bank of England - i.e. Scottish/Irish/Gibraltar etc)
New pound coins can just be spent. A minority of merchants don't accept cash but it isn't hard to find one that does.
If your UK friend has an account with a bank that has branches with tellers in a convenient location, then they should be able to easily deposit the old coins.
But high street banks have closed many branches in recent years, many people have accounts with branchless banks, and some branches only have machines for cash deposits, which stopped accepting the old pound coin in 2018.