s a pre-teenage British Empire enthusiast in the early 1950s I always felt unhappy and disappointed when a Young Head Victoria, or Edward VII, or any issues of the two Georges, tumbled from my one-shilling assorted packet only to expose itself fully as a colonial that had gone decimal and announced its value in cents, or pies, or piastras or some equally outlandish money. Shillings and pence, and a very occasional £1, made up the currency I preferred to find on my stamps, especially those that included a ½ or even a ¼ symbol in their rate. For the life of me, I could not grasp why a young collector in distant Ceylon or Fiji would have had difficulties with fifty pennies equalling 4s 2d; or that 960 farthings making £1. Such acrobatics in mental arithmetic had been instilled into me
