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US Dollar is Now Worth Half of a British Pound

Update for Google Visitors: This post is getting a lot of traffic so I’m putting the current and historical conversion tools front and center to help you on your conversion quest:

XE – Universal Currency Converter

Historical currency rates with oanda.com

Today I was buying a license for gAttach, an amazing tool which allows you to send any item from Windows (PDF, Word document, picture, Snagit, basically anything with an “Email this”) to Gmail as an attachment. I promised Chris Wood the developer I would send a donation because he has created something unique and valuable. Donate here

As I went to checkout with Paypal, I noticed this disturbing conversion rate.

PayPal Conversion Rate as of Sep. 28, 2008: 1 U.S. Dollar = 0.529051 British Pounds

So I did some research because I don’t remember the dollar only being worth 50% of the Euro / pound. I looked up historical currency rates with oanda.com and here’s what I found

Conversion Table: USD to EUR (Interbank rate)
Time period: 09/22/03 to 09/28/08

Average (1834 days): 0.76882
High: 0.87940
Low: 0.623

Time period: 09/22/00 to 09/28/05

Average (1833 days): 0.95120
High: 1.21520
Low: 0.73150

It seems that we first dipped under a 1:1 ratio 12/05/2002 with 0.99990

Does this mean that US items are now a bargain for European countries? Will tourism increase because it’s cheaper to take “holiday” in the United States?

Time period: 09/22/95 to 09/28/99

Average (1468 days): 0.92625
High: 0.98910
Low: 0.83610

Photo Credit DanieVDM

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  • brittany

    how would i figure out how to convert a british pound to a us dollar??

    say if i had
    45.91 pounds
    how much would i have in us dollars??

    thanks!

  • adria.richards

    To figure out exact amounts like yours, I suggest using XE – Universal Currency Converter which is very popular.

    Your requested conversion is as follows for 9/29/2008
    45.91 pounds = $82.68
    ——————————————————–
    Reference from XE Universal Currency Converter
    ——————————————————–
    Live rates at 2008.09.29 22:36:17 UTC
    45.91 GBP
    =
    82.6818 USD

    1 GBP = 1.80096 USD
    1 USD = 0.555261 GBP

  • http://www.gattach.net Chris Wood

    Hi Adria!

    Thanks for the donation! Love your blog too.

    I can confirm that it’s a great time to be a British tourist in the US at the moment. I was there back in April and May and it meant I had a very nice vacation, even on a budget.

    But it’s not all rosey.. our gas is currently just under $7 a gallon (about £1 a litre)!

    I’ll swap you some British pounds for some unleaded petrol, if you like? :-)

    Chris

  • http://www.forexvise.com Currency Trading

    I always prefer XE Converter for reliable currency exchange rates, and always have been using this platform. And GBP is consistently increasing as compared to Dollar.