Old £1 coins will be worthless in a week and taken out of circulation

Shops won't have to accept them after Sunday 15 October so consumers are being advised to spend them this week

Old £1 coins will no longer be accepted to make purchases after 15 October.

The new-look 12-sided quid will be the only valid £1 coin from next Sunday so any old £1 coins lying around in sofas or piggy banks around the UK need to be spent before then.

GoCompare Money estimates there are around 420 million old £1 coins stashed away that shops will no longer have to accept after the deadline at 23:59 on 15 October. Consumers are being urged to spend the old money before then.

After the deadline, coins can still be exchanged for notes at a bank, building society or post office branch. Most will also only agree to do so if you're an account holder for a temporary period.

The BBC is also running a Children in Need campaign, 'Pudsey's Round Pound Countdown', to persuade people to donate old coins to the charity if they can.

The Government announced the new £1 coin in the 2014 Budget and it has been described by the Royal Mint as “the most secure coin in the world”.

The 12-sided coin has a number of features that make it considerably more difficult to fake. It is made from two metals, the outer gold ring of nickel-brass and the inner section of nickel-plated alloy. The old coins won’t be wasted - Some of those returned by the public will be melted down and used to make the 12-sided version.

“It’s craziness that £1 coins as we know them will soon become worthless, Hannah Maundrell, editor in chief at Money.co.uk, told The Independent earlier this year.

"It sends a bad message about saving to the many children that will be left disappointed when they find the £1 coins they’ve squirrelled away in their piggy bank are worthless.

"With more of us using cards and contactless payments to pay, the worth of going to all of this effort to replace what soon could be a redundant medium is questionable.

“You can get your bank to trade £1 coins for notes as long as they’re in bags of 20. If you don’t have this much sitting around you can just pay them into your bank or savings account and draw them back out in note form. Don’t use coin machines to swap them as they’re likely to charge.”

Martin Lewis, founder of the MoneySavingExpert website encouraged people to spend their old £1 coins before it’s too late. “Carting a bag of coins to the bank is a real faff – particularly if there isn’t a branch near you,” he wrote.

This year has been a busy one for the Royal Mint. It has also released a number of commemorative coin designs including a £2 coin to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of Jane Austen and a 50p celebrating Sir Isaac Newton’s influence on science, mathematics and minting.

There have also been new coins to mark the 100th anniversary of the House of Windsor, the 200th anniversary of the modern Sovereign, the 1000th anniversary of the coronation of King Canute and to commemorate the centenary of the First World War.