The £1 coin celebrates its 30th birthday on Sunday – although the pound in your pocket does not go as far now as it did in 1983.

The coin was first issued on 21 April 1983, as it was felt that a coin would be more useful than the less robust £1 note amid the decline in its spending power and the growth of the vending industry.

A note lasted for just nine months on average, while a £1 coin, with its distinctive yellow "brassy" colour, can survive for upwards of 40 years.

The reverse designs of the £1 coin represent the UK and its four constituent parts – Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England – and the first series of designs took floral emblems as its theme.

The purchasing power of the £1 coin has changed considerably since it first became legal tender. A loaf of bread cost 38p in 1983, according to Office for National Statistics figures, compared with £1.24 by 2012. A pint of milk was 21p in 1983; by last year it had more than doubled to 46p.

A £1 coin would have stretched to a whole pint of lager back in the 1980s, with the average pint costing around 93p in 1987. By last year, the average price of a pint was £3.18.

With a thickness of 3.15mm, the coin was designed to be easy to distinguish from other loose change. This has not stopped it from being targeted by counterfeiters, and almost three in every 100 pound coins are thought to be duds.

The Royal Mint, which regularly conducts surveys to estimate the level of counterfeit coins in the UK, undertook a survey last November which found that the rate of fake £1 coins in circulation had dropped to 2.74%, down from 3.09% a year earlier. The Mint works closely with banks and the Post Office to identify and withdraw counterfeits at cash centres.

Ways to spot a fake include looking at how even the lettering is, seeing if the milled edge of the coin is even and well-defined and examining the colour. Genuine £1 coins that have been in circulation for some time appear more shiny and golden. More information about how to spot a fake £1 coin is on the Royal Mint's website.

There have also been many changes to the way people pay for their shopping since the £1 coin was introduced, with less reliance on cash and cheques and greater use of plastic. According to figures from the Payments Council, cash accounted for 86% of payments in the UK in the mid-1980s, but by 2011 this had dropped to 55%.

The decline in cash usage has coincided with the rise in automated payments such as direct debits and standing orders. Debit cards, brought in four years after the first pound coins, made up 19% of payments by 2011.

The arrival of new technologies such as "tap and go" card payments and mobile phone money-transfer apps are also a world away from how people made transactions 30 years ago.

A spokesman for the Payments Council said: "The past 30 years have seen the cash and cheque generation, who were reliant on traditional payment methods, being joined by a new plastic and electronic generation.

"Since 1983 we have seen the advent of many new ways to pay: the debit card arrived in 1987; online banking in 1997; and the Faster Payments Service was launched in 2008, allowing almost instantaneous internet and phone payments. Cash and cheques are still very much with us, but with the greater range of payment options available to us their usage has dropped significantly over the past 30 years."