Why do UK coins have ridges on the sides? The sneaky reason behind the design

There's a lot of thought which goes into creating UK coins, from the colour to the shape. But have you ever stopped and wondered why your change features ridges on the sides?

Have you ever wondered why UK coins have ridges on the sides?

Well, according to a TikTok user, there's a sneaky reason behind this...

A video has emerged on the social media platform revealing the surprising history of the ridges on UK coins.

Viewer @CoinCollectingWizard told his 191,000 followers the information, which has left viewers stunned.

He claimed all coins were made of gold or silver and didn’t have ridges back in the day.

Each coin's value was based on the amount of gold or silver in it.

But some people sought to make an illegal profit from these coins, he claimed.

"They filed off the edges and sold them for their value in gold or silver," the TikTok user added.

"The smaller-sized coin often went unnoticed, but this dishonest practice decreased the value of the original gold or silver coin.

"To prevent this, the government began milling, or grooving, the edges so a coin could easily be identified if it was trimmed."

Nowadays coins today are no longer made of pure gold or silver, but the milled edges remain.

He continued: "This means back then people could just make the coin smaller, keep the gold they took off the coin, and still use the coin as usual, so they put grooves on it.

"So it would be a lot harder to do that. Now it's just tradition."

There's also another reason why coins have ridges, also known as reeded edges.

The purpose is to prevent counterfeiting and to make it harder to clip or shave the edges of coins.

Also the ridges on the 10p coin make it easier to distinguish from the 2p coin, which has a smooth edge.

Since it was shared, one person commented: "Interesting, never knew this."

While another gushed: "Thank you."

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