Has there ever been a country that had silver content in their 1 and/or 2 cent coins?

edward i struck silver farthings. he was the first to do so. i believe, and could very well be wrong in this, that elizabeth i was the first to use copper.

 

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These silver "cents" probably get spent as such about as often as someone spends their hockey pucks as a quarter dollar.

 

I believe there was a complete 1868 set for sale at the FUN show about 4 years ago. It might have been the year when FUN was in Ft Lauderdale.

 

This isn't a lie. That coin looks like it was made to commemorate the Salem witch trials.

 

Didn't Mexico have a silver 1 centavo in the late nineteenth century? Or was it "German" silver?

There was also a US Feuchtwanger Cent (which was the precursor to the Flying Eagle penny), produced in several different alloys. I'm not an expert on hard times tokens - were any of them produced out of silver or billion?

 

I think this is the one you're referring to:

http://coins.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=422&lotNo=1353

 

I've got one

I've got one that answers the OPs original question. Here is a silver US cent. It is dated 1964-D. It was struck on a 90% silver planchet in the mint's coining press. (The silver blank was intended to be struck as a dime but accidents happen).

This particular 1964-D coin is not mine.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny

The first ones were around 700 AD.

Etymology Old English versions of the word penny are penig, pening, penning and pending; the word appears in German as Pfennig, in Dutch and Swedish (often shortened to peng) as penning, and in West Frisian as peinje or penje. In Swedish, the word pengar is also the most common for money. These words are thought by some to have common roots with the English word "pawn", German Pfand, and Dutch pand, words which mean "a pledge or token".[SUP][1][/SUP]
[h=2][edit] Origin and history of development[/h]The silver penny of medieval Europe was modeled on similar small silver coins from antiquity: the Greek drachma and Roman Denarius.

 

The British have been doing it for years. And a silver cent or nickel for the SF mint anniversary would require new legislation to create them, and legislation to get an exemption from the only two commemorative coin programs per year law. That is why we will probably get "special" ASE's, no new legislation required and the Mint can do it on their own authority.

 

More the denari than the drachm. The drachm was heavier and thicker. The penny was basically the German version of the denari, so much so that until decimalization the abbreviation for penny in the UK was d.

 

it looks like a witch esp with the nose

 

Not to be the spelling police but in this case it makes a LARGE difference. The term for debased silver is billon, not billion...

Richard

 

The first Japanese 5 sen was 1.25g of .800 silver. In 1870 that was equivalent to a U.S. nickel. The rin (1/10 of a sen), 1/2 sen and 1 sen coins were copper, and the 2 sen was bronze.