A bigger one than usual. The coin identifier has been rebuilt around the catalogue as it is now, the measurement tools stopped ignoring most of it, and the site keeps its own record of how it is used, with a switch to turn that off.
Three ways to identify a coin
The coin identifier now has three ways in. Answer questions, as before: portrait, denomination, year, finish. Measure it, for a coin worn smooth: diameter, weight, and now thickness, shape and colour, ranked by closeness. Or type what you know: "1971 2p", "kew gardens 50p", "1887 shilling", in any order. The UK coin checker page has the typed box at the top, so the page most of you arrive on actually identifies coins now.
A few things that were quietly wrong are fixed. The 7-sided option missed a quarter of the 50ps and 20ps because the catalogue spells the shape two ways. A coin with no recorded shape vanished from every option, including Round. A coin struck across several years only appeared under its first year, so a 1977 2p could not be reached. Proofs and piedforts were listed ahead of the coin you hold in your hand. Circulation strikes now lead, and the proofs and finishes of the same coin fold under one card. A coin with no catalogue diameter can still match on its weight, and typing a weight no longer throws out every coin we have no weight for.
The portrait step goes back past Victoria: William IV, the Georges, Anne, William III, James II, Charles II, and one tile for hammered coins. Ireland has its own path with no portrait step.
Every issuer, and a chip that says which
The catalogue has held Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, the Isle of Man, Gibraltar, the territories and Ireland for a while, and the identifier mixed them in with the UK coins without saying so, while the weight and diameter tools searched the United Kingdom alone and so had lost the pre-1707 English and Scottish coins too. All three tools now search the UK by default, with a control to add the Crown Dependencies and territories, or Ireland, and every result carries a chip naming the issuer. The reference tables of coin sizes and weights on the two tools, the sizes guide and the UK coins page now read from one table of Royal Mint specifications, with a source on every row.
A record of how the site is used
Until now the only record of what people did here was Google Analytics, which ad blockers hide and which we cannot query for the site itself. The site now keeps its own: which pages are read and for how long, which features are used, where visits come from, the type of device, and a rough country from the browser's clock. It stores no IP address and no browser identification string, and the raw record is deleted after 13 months. It is on by default. The cookie notice has a "No thanks" button that turns it off for that browser, and members have a "Personalised data" switch in Account Settings that turns it off for their account on every device. The cookie policy and privacy policy describe it, and the privacy policy no longer claims we use no advertising cookies, which stopped being true when adverts arrived on the guide and coin pages.
Smaller things
- On phones the coins on the browse page could run off the left edge when an advert landed inside the grid. Fixed.
- The main menu listed every issuer from Jersey to the British Indian Ocean Territory under Browse. It now lists Browse Coins, UK Coins and Coin Series, and the country pills on the browse page reach the rest.
- A site search that finds nothing now offers to run the same words through the identifier.
- Sign-ups made through the mobile app did not record where the visit came from. They do now.
If a figure on the site looks wrong to you, the Contact page is the fastest way to tell us.