My dad is going to be in England for a 3 hour layover and I was gonna ask him to get some coins. Do any of you UK Cointalk members know if he can just go to a mcdonalds or something and ask for a roll or 2 of coins?
I have a lot of luck with convenience stores here, there again I've never been over there so don't know if they have them or not. But here at home I've tried some of the fast food chains locally here and they never want to give you the coins. My apologies I didn't see the layover part been up since 1am.
I can promise you that you're not going to find anything older than 1971, and in fact quite a bit of it will be the more recent steel coinage. Aside from the US and Canada, Switzerland might be the only country where it is possible to find older coinage. Occasionally in the UK you might find some Gibraltar, IoM or Channel Islands coins but they are fairly scarce finds.
To add to what scottishmoney has said, coins aren´t rolled over there too much. Merchants receive them in small bags. Like scottishmoney also said, consider the oldest coins that will be given date from 1971. I think your best bet is to have your dad use a £20 note to make some small purchases at the airport. I would imagine the amount of coins given back would satisfy your collecting interests in current circulating coinage from the UK.
In some countries they did roll coin - I bought some at Banque Nationale de Paris before the Euro. Generally when I got quantities of coin in E. Europe I got them in little baggies.
