Good news for many gamers that those lovely magnetic (post 1992) 1p and 2p coins are staying in UK circulation after a recent consultation https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/penny-coins-1p-2p-access-save-hm-treasury-a8897936.html
1p and 2p coins are so useful for basing gaming figures, especially giving that little bit of weight and magnetic bases to plastic figures. I have been using this penny basing method for Airfix figures since about 2001.
Credit where credit is due (we are talking money after all) I learnt about this magnetic aspect from Bob Cordery’s blog http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/2010/01/single-figure-bases-cheap-bases.html
So it is still possible to keep asking for bags of penny and Tuppence coins, if ever in my local bank branch. Trips to the seaside also have those fabulous seaside amusements with the 2p change machines – I sometimes get a couple of pounds of these, quickly and discreetly select through them. I then use the pre-1992 non magnetic ones in the copper waterfall and tuppenny flipper machines, at which I rarely win anything back . So the amusements people can’t complain too much!
Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN 9 May 2019 – The third anniversary of creating the Man of TIN blog.
However my blog birthday remains the date of my first tentative Man of TIN post on the 25th May, which is coincidentally Geek Pride Day, Towel Day, a Discworkd / Pratchett day and a Star Wars anniversary too!
Man of Tin blog 
Interesting, and useful! American pennies are not magnetic, unfortunately; I have mounted my colonial figures on them. I do have a few steel pennies (minted during WWII), but they’re too rare to use.
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I am delighted to hear that the coins are being retained. They are so handy ( with or without movement trays) and currently on the painting table are 25mm Minifigs AWI undergoing 1 p basing and 54mm undergoing 2p bases.
I find the banks really helpful if you ask for a bag of coins l do wonder if they wonder what they are for or perhaps they are gamers too. In the future intrigued archaeologists will dig up coins in my garden with deposits of paint, glue and tetrion. I wonder what they will make of them? Ritual ?
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Definitely A ritual object, hoard or deposit! I have never thankfully been asked what they are for. Would I truthfully tell them? As they are not permanently damaged there is no legal problem. Even those souvenir penny presses are legal (they used to have a notice or sticker saying so) which stretches / flattens the coins beyond use. If each pressed penny didn’t cost a quid to do, they would be good Cavalry bases.
Happy basing / rebasing.
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I believe that Wilko’s 25 and 30mm washers work out cheaper.
Choose from two sizes of bag and stuff in as many as you can at a fixed price!
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Thanks for the tip. I shall check this out on ymy next pound store recce trip, in case the chancellor changes his mind or more likely, more bank branches disappear locally.
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Great news, I say! All of my very numerous Strelets Crimean War and Russo-Turkish War figures are based on pennies. My wife freaks out when she sees all the pennies through the transparent box, “look at all that money!” – and I have to point out that together they might total £2’s worth at most. When I glue them on, I always think of it in terms of the figure sort of becoming a full soldier in taking the ‘queen’s shilling’. Eccentrically, I also never glue them on to the side with the Queen’s head. Seems grossly disrespectful, somehow!
I admit that I didn’t know about the magnetic difference. And we still enjoy the penny amusement arcades each year we go to the seaside.
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I too do not use the queens head side, this is left untouched.
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