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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 3643577, member: 66&quot;]Probably two maybe three reasons.&nbsp; One, because the other coins had some kind of edge ornamentation, and since the edges needed to be upset anyway, why not.&nbsp; Second, although they were not legal tender they did contain nearly their full intrinsic value in metal under the prevailing theory that coins needed to contain their full weight in metal in order to be accepted.&nbsp; A &quot;clipped&quot; coin would be a cheat and the ornamented edge helped to prevent this.&nbsp; And three, it provided a way to fully express what the value of the coin was.&nbsp; People knew what dollars were, but what the heck was a cent?&nbsp; The only other country to have used a decimal coinage system was Russia, and the average person would not be acquainted with that.&nbsp; They were used to coinage systems where the fractional parts were based on sixth, eighths, or twelfths.&nbsp; (Most businesses continued keeping their books in pounds shillings and pence into the early 1800&#039;s) A denomination of one cent or half cent didn&#039;t mean much to them.&nbsp; The fraction helped 1/100.&nbsp; One one hundredth of what?&nbsp; And there spelled out on the edge one hundred for a dollar, now they can see the relationship.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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