In the UK we used to have nice, single pound bank-notes, but these were replaced by a hideous, heavyweight coin. Get ten of these clunky bruisers in your pocket at the same time and you start walking lop-sided. Increasingly we also now find oursleves having to deal with the two pound coin, an even bigger beast of "small change".

We now hear that the five pound coin is on its way. Given the inevitabilty of this lumpen development, I now propose the Five pound Yo-Yo-Blair Coin.

This new coin is appropriately large to reflect its value, big enough in fact to have room for a deep groove to encompass its thick perimeter, allowing its function to double up as that of a yo-yo.

One side this coin will feature a fragmented swirly image. This is designed to enable the coins to be "yo-yo-ed" under strobe lighting at a disco, and make them more acceptable, due to their increased entertainment value.

When the spinning speed matches the correct frequency of strobe light, a flickering image of Tony Blair may be seen to flash momentarliy. It is this feature that gives the coin its name.
-- xenzag, Sep 23 2007

One Pound Coins http://www.javajane.../objects/pounds.jpg
already half way to being big enough to be a small yo-yo [xenzag, Sep 23 2007]

Yo-Blair http://news.indepen.../article1183388.ece
From where half of the name comes. [xenzag, Sep 23 2007]

yo-yo http://z.about.com/...rs/1/7/F/1/yoyo.gif
nice illustration [xenzag, Sep 23 2007]

Royal Mint issued £5 Coin http://www.royalmin.../PackedSets/A7.aspx
Cost slightly more than a fiver though. Not advisable to use as a yo-yo. [DrBob, Sep 25 2007]

This is a ridiculous idea, which would normally garner a [+] from me, but the Blair bit has put me off. Could you make the image humiliating? Maybe that shot of him trying to look like a cowboy with his thumbs looped around his belt?
-- DocBrown, Sep 23 2007


I had thought the spectacle of him being on a yo-yo would be enough... It would be relatively easy to make him wink knowingly, and of course cringingly as he "feels the hand of destiny on his shoulder", but ultimately the idea is more about the double function of the coin. I threw "him" in as a bonus - couldn't resist.
-- xenzag, Sep 23 2007


Bordering on the practical![+]
-- the dog's breakfast, Sep 23 2007


[+] but let's just hope that this doesn't trigger a flurry of ideas for large coins with secondary uses.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 23 2007


I think you could bang something like this together now, as a protest against the existing coins, and peddle them. One would glue two coins together about a small axle, wrap it with string and sell it. The axle could be made of lead, to maximize weight. To paraphrase Freewheeling Franklin Freak: "Money yoyos will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no yoyos."
-- bungston, Sep 24 2007


They do already have £5 coins but I think only commemorative, like a Diana one and a Jubilee one.
-- marklar, Sep 25 2007


fish bone eaten between my cossiant...
-- 100 percent, Sep 26 2007


I spent the 3 £5 coins I ever owned.
I have,however, changed up £450 in pound coins at a pub up the road in Nottingham to take back to the pub I was working in. Not to mention the fear factor, you should have seen be trying to corner with £200 in each pocket of my long coat!
-- gnomethang, Sep 26 2007



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