A "Tickey" was a 2 ½ cent coin from Rhodesia.
I recall the pervasive parking meter. In the city, every
street-level parking bay had a mechanical timer; you would feed the coins into
the device, crank the handle (like a gumball machine) and it would show how
much parking time you had left. When the time ran out a little red flag would
swing into view, saying “EXPIRED” and attracting the meter maid, looking to fine anyone parked in an expired bay. The system today, unbelievably, is even more awkward.
What was unusual, I think, was that we had a coin specifically for this one purpose. The coin was a ‘tickey’, 2 ½ cents (formerly threepence) and it was tiny ~ so small, in fact, that they were easy to find by touch alone. Outside of parking meters, the tickey seemed to have no purpose.
The coins I experienced were decimal but these here show the conversion – threepence (3d) to 2 ½ cents, sixpence (6d) to 5 cents, a shilling (1/-) to 10 cents, a florin (2/-) to 20 cents and a half crown (2/6) to 25 cents.
The largest bill in print, lol, was ten dollars, the equivalent of 20 pounds sterling.
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