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Message:: [QUOTE="afantiques, post: 2708252, member: 71234"]British gold circulated routinely until the end of 1914 when the outbreak of WWI saw it all replaced by at first an emergency issue of Treasury notes of £1 and 10/- denomination (previously the lowest value note in use was the £5 note) and later by a better designed and printed issue of Treasury notes, and after the war these were replaced by Bank of England pound and ten shilling notes. If there was any public outrage at this I cannot find it reported. At the time the general populace were intensely patriotic. THere was no 'confiscation' or compulsory exchange of gold for paper, just as it passed through the banks the gold was filtered out and if you withdrew cash it came as paper. So for Britain the date is 1914. In practice, as soon as the paper money started to inflate, the gold coins would command a premium wherever you were and they'd not be circulating at face value. By the 1920s the British gold sovereign was worth almost 50% over face, now it is worth 200 times face. The strain of this double value for gold and paper is reflected in  US banking and fiscal processes into the 20s.  Using WWI as an excuse to decouple paper from gold might have been a good idea.[/QUOTE]