So I was reading this month's Numistmatist and found this little nugget. As far as the cents and half cents not having legal tender status, I'm trying to figure out if this is one of those coin things I should have known already. What were they used for, if not legal tender? Did this just mean you couldn't settle up a debt at the bank or local store with a sack full of copper coins, but they were acceptable for small exchanges?
I could be wrong about this, but I remember reading somewhere that cents and half cents were only accepted for debts up to $1.00, or $5.00, or something.
They were not until 1965; When the Coinage Act of 1965 was passed, it had an important clause that ratified the legal tender status of all American coins and currency previously produced (thus finally legalizing the trade dollar). http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v16n37a20.html
When the bronze indianheads were introduced the cents were given legal tender status up to 10 cents. Whether that gave the earlier cents limited legal tender status retroactively is up to debate. The half cents were gone by that time, and they didn't receive legal tender status until much later. And no you couldn't just take a bunch of cents to the bank or sometimes the store either. In fact that became a big problem after the FE cents were introduced. They were issued in huge quantities. The shops became loaded down with them and the banks wouldn't take them. But if the shops couldn't deposit them they wouldn't have the money they needed to resupply. And they couldn't use the cents in bulk to pay for their supplies because they were only legal tender to 10 cents! Often they had to sell them to brokers at a discount to get rid of them. Imagine that, having to sell money at less than face value just to get rid of it.
Ye, that would be nuts. But I'm still left with why coin them if they weren't going to be legal tender?
I believe I read somewhere that there was a lot of trouble with hoarding during the Civil War, which was one reason for privately issued store cards/tokens and that the general public did not trust the government to honor their cash, especially since a major financial crash preceeding the war. Not to mention that the Confederate forces were burning everything in site including banks and stealing the money and issuing their own illegal notes and cash. Even though gold and silver certificates were recalled a long time ago they are still legal tender as are all postage stamps for use in mailing as they also were never demonetized.
Ed, please forgive me as I did not intend to insult, denigrate or put down, in any way, the folks of the south. I only wish the people up north here had the manners, integrity and civility of southern folk. And it was a terrible war, please accept my sincere and humble apology if I have insulted you. It was certainly not my intention.
I accept your apology. My grandmother never cussed in her life, but she got upset when my cousin married a "Yankee from Yonkers, NY", and became livid when they had their daughter inform her that she was a Yankee, saying, "What a terrible thing to teach a child to say!" LOL But I am a history buff and majored in History in college. So the current efforts to change our country's history in most public schools today to a more PC history does get my blood pressure up. I too am sorry if I came across to harsh to you.
At the time only gold and silver were considered to be "real money" and they were the only things considered worthy to be legal tender. (And at that time legal tender meant it HAD to be accepted. No one really wanted anything other than precious metal forced on them.) Copper money was for "tokens". But it wasn't practical to make the very small change out of silver Can you imagine a silver cent a fifth of the size of the half dime? Or a half cent a tenth the size? But the cents and half cents were needed. A cent was real money back then. So they made them out of copper to make the size practical, but didn't make the legal tender so you were't forced to take something that was't "real money" And this was not unique to the US. Copper coins in most if not all countries were not legal tender but merely a convenience for small change.
Now one can't forget that one of our first American cents was the 1792 Silver Center Cent? Was that then an attempt to make cents legal tender? The whole concept of a coin that isn't legal tender because it isn't silver of gold defies common sense, as Poor Richard pointed out, "a penny saved is a penny earned". I doubt very seriously that there were any citizens around during the 18th and 19th century that walked on by a copper cent just because it wasn't silver or gold. The common copper cent of 200 years ago possibly got in exchange as much, if not more, merchandise than a single Federal Reserve dollar note buys today, and yet many, including myself, still bend down to pick up every copper plated zinc cent when we see them on the ground. By the very meaning of legal tender then, it means the coin has value to pay a debt or purchase an item in an exchange in commerce, and 100 of those copper plated zinc cents will still buy me a half of a Snicker's bar today.
