Decimalisation and fruit machines, 1971

Decimalisation and fruit machines in 1971: the short answer

Britain’s switch from pounds, shillings and pence to a 100-penny pound did not hit fruit machines in a single weekend. The new money was phased in over roughly three years, and the two coins most useful to coin-operated machines, the 5p and the 10p, were deliberately made identical in size and value to coins already in pockets. That design choice is the single most important fact for anyone researching decimalisation and fruit machines.

The Royal Mint’s account of decimalisation (opens in a new tab) records that the 5p and 10p entered circulation in April 1968, matching the existing shilling and florin so they could circulate side by side as ‘decimal twins’. Decimal Day itself, when the new halfpenny, penny and twopence arrived and 100 pennies made a pound, was 15 February 1971.

What the published record does not give is a neat story of engineers visiting every pub and arcade on a set date. None of the sources we checked describes how individual machines were converted. This page sets out the dated coin changes, explains what they meant mechanically for a coin slot, and flags where the trail goes cold. For the wider story of machines in this country, see slot machines in Britain and the main slot machine history hub.

How pre-decimal money worked on a coin slot

Before 1971 a pound was 20 shillings and a shilling was 12 pence, so a pound held 240 old pennies. Prices were written with ‘s’ and ‘d’ (from the Latin solidus and denarius), and a machine’s price-of-play label might read 1d, 6d or 1s. Coin mechanisms of the period sorted coins physically, by size and weight, so each slot was built around particular coins rather than around a value.

That matters because the coins people fed into amusement and gaming machines changed at different times. A coin slot doesn’t care about arithmetic; it cares whether the disc falling into it has the expected diameter and heft. Any change to a coin’s physical specification is a machine problem, while a change to its name is not.

The decimal values for the halfpenny and penny are simple arithmetic (100 ÷ 240 = 0.4167p). Those coins never had an official decimal equivalent in circulation, which is why they had to go.

The decimal twins: why shilling and florin slots kept working

Because the 5p matched the shilling and the 10p matched the florin, a coin mechanism set up for a shilling had nothing to distinguish it from a 5p. In practice this meant that any machine priced in shillings or florins could take the new coins from April 1968 without a single part being changed, and the value it credited was still correct: one shilling was exactly 5p.

This is the key reason decimalisation was far less disruptive for higher-priced machines than people sometimes assume. The machines facing real change were the ones built around coppers: the old penny, the halfpenny and the threepenny bit. Those coins had no decimal twin, and the new bronze coins introduced on 15 February 1971 were a different size.

Wikipedia’s Decimal Day article adds a revealing side note: some people used new pennies as sixpences in vending machines. It shows how coin slots judged discs purely by their physical properties, and why any coin of a similar size to an accepted coin was a headache for machine owners.

The real deadline for penny machines: 31 August 1971

Decimal Day was the start date for spending the new bronze coins, but the old penny and threepence were not withdrawn until 31 August 1971. They left everyday use within about two weeks of Decimal Day, according to the same Wikipedia account, yet the formal deadline gave operators of penny-priced machines a short window to adapt.

Which machines were affected? Anything priced in old pennies: the penny-in-the-slot amusements found at seaside piers and in arcades, and any gaming machine set up to take coppers. The history of seaside arcades is closely tied to penny play, which is one reason the 1971 switch is remembered so strongly there.

Owners had broad choices: re-gauge or replace the coin mechanism for a decimal coin, re-price the machine for a coin with a twin (such as the 5p), or retire it. Which route individual operators took, and how many machines went each way, is not documented in any source we checked, so this page does not put numbers on it.

1. Identify the coin the machine accepts by looking at the coin entry plate and any price label.
2. Check that coin against the withdrawal dates in the table above.
3. If it took a shilling or florin, it would have accepted 5p or 10p unchanged from April 1968.
4. If it took an old penny or threepence, it needed a different coin mechanism or a new price by 31 August 1971.
5. If it took a sixpence, it could keep running until June 1980, at a value of 2½p per play.

The sixpence, the 2½p and odd prices of play

The sixpence was the oddity of decimalisation. Worth exactly 2½p, it stayed legal and was finally withdrawn in June 1980. The Royal Mint lists that withdrawal, and Wikipedia’s Decimal Day article notes that it paved the way for the decimal halfpenny to go in 1984.

For machine pricing, a coin worth 2½p is awkward. A sixpenny play had no whole-penny equivalent, and the new halfpenny existed partly to make such amounts payable. Machines that kept taking sixpences through the 1970s were, in effect, still running on old money, even though the price would now be written as 2½p.

The halfpenny’s own story ran from the decimal ½p arriving on 15 February 1971 to its demonetisation on 31 December 1984. The old halfpenny had already gone on 31 July 1969, more than eighteen months before Decimal Day.

The law behind 1971 fruit machines: the Gaming Act 1968

Decimalisation coincided with a new legal framework for machines. The Gaming Act 1968 set out rules for gaming by means of machines in Part III, sections 26 to 39 of the text on legislation.gov.uk (opens in a new tab). It separated jackpot machines in casinos, bingo clubs and members’ clubs (section 31) from amusement-with-prizes machines in pubs, arcades and other premises (section 34).

The original 1968 money limits are not in any source we checked, so we don’t quote them. The limits we can date come later. A 2001 review recorded amusement-with-prizes (AWP) machines at a 30p stake with a £5 cash or £8 token prize, and the 2006 Variation of Monetary Limits Order (opens in a new tab) raised the AWP stake from 30p to 50p and the all-cash AWP prize from £25 to £35 from 27 October 2006. Every one of those figures is written in decimal money, a reminder of how fully the new currency replaced the old.

The 1968 regime ran until the Gambling Act 2005 took over on 1 September 2007 and introduced today’s categories.

Decimalisation and fruit machines: a dated timeline

Two later steps on that list deserve a note. The smaller 5p (1990) and 10p (1992) ended the life of the shilling and florin, and any machine that had quietly accepted those big coins for two decades needed its coin handling updated. And the £1 coin of 1983, followed by its 12-sided replacement in 2017, set up the next big coin change, covered on our page about the new pound coin and machines.

What a 1971 fruit machine actually did with your coin

Machines of the early 1970s were largely electromechanical: physical reels driven by motors, with relays and switches deciding the outcome. The electromechanical era began in the United States in the 1960s, and machines of that general type were common in Britain while the currency changed. The coin did three jobs: it started the game, it was counted towards the takings, and in cash-paying machines it might be paid back out as a prize.

Decimalisation touched each of those jobs. A new coin size meant changes to the coin acceptor. A new denomination meant the prize and price labels had to be re-written. And where machines paid out in coins, the payout side had to handle whatever coin the prize was now paid in. The symbols on the reels, from the cherry to the bell and the BAR, carried on unchanged.

Modern machines are very different. The outcome is set by a random number generator or, on many pub machines, a compensated controller that steers the long-run return. If you want the full workings, our guide to fruit machines in the UK explains holds, nudges and feature trails.

Decimalisation myths about fruit machines

A few claims circulate about 1971 that the records don’t support. Here is how they stand against what we could verify.

• ‘Every machine had to be converted on Decimal Day.’ Not so. Shilling and florin machines took 5p and 10p from 1968, sixpence machines could run until 1980, and penny machines had until 31 August 1971.
• ‘Decimalisation made machines pay less.’ No source we checked shows payout percentages changing because of the currency switch. Prices and prizes were re-labelled; the maths of any individual machine depended on how its owner set it.
• ‘The 5p was a new coin size.’ It wasn’t, until 1990. For more than twenty years the 5p was physically the shilling.
• ‘There was a legal minimum payout at the time.’ We found no regulatory minimum return for any machine category today, and none for 1971 in the sources we checked.

The broader lesson for players hasn’t changed since 1971: a machine’s built-in return decides what it pays over time, not the coin you put in. Our guide to fruit machine payouts explains how that works today.

Fruit machines since decimalisation: the rules today

A pub fruit machine is now a Category C gaming machine with a £1 maximum stake and a £100 maximum prize, and play is for adults only. The Gambling Commission’s gaming machine categories (opens in a new tab) set out the stake and prize limits for every type, and our UK slot machine categories page explains where each can be sited.

Card payments still can’t be used to play gaming machines in Great Britain. The government decided in May 2024 to lift the debit card ban once protections are in place, but that change is not in force. See debit cards on gaming machines for the current position.

Playing fruit-style slots online today

Decimalisation is history, but the fruit machine look lives on in online fruit slots, which run on an RNG rather than coin mechanisms and are capped at £5 a spin for players aged 25 and over and £2 a spin for 18 to 24-year-olds. The offers below are from licensed casinos; they are for adults only and terms apply.

Coral: bet £10 on slots and get 100 free spins worth 10p each on selected games, with no wagering on free spin winnings (new players, some payment methods excluded). Ladbrokes: after £10 of slot play, 50 free spins land daily for ten days (500 at most, 10p each), with no wagering. PlayOJO: 80 free spins on Big Bass Bonanza at 10p each after a first deposit of at least £10, winnings paid in cash. Coral and Ladbrokes sit under one operator, which may stop you claiming both welcomes. Game availability changes; search each casino’s lobby.

Whatever you play, treat it as paid entertainment: losses are the likely outcome over time. Set a deposit limit first, and if gambling stops being fun, call the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133.

18+. Gambling should be entertainment that costs money, not a way to make it. Decide a budget before you play: plan a slot budget. Free, confidential help: National Gambling Helpline 0808 8020 133.