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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 2079817, member: 66&quot;]At the time only gold and silver were considered to be &quot;real money&quot; and they were the only things considered worthy to be legal tender.&nbsp; (And at that time legal tender meant it HAD to be accepted.&nbsp; No one really wanted anything other than precious metal forced on them.)&nbsp; Copper money was for &quot;tokens&quot;.&nbsp; But it wasn&#039;t practical to make the very small change out of silver&nbsp; Can you imagine a silver cent a fifth of the size of the half dime?&nbsp; Or a half cent a tenth the size?</p><p><br /></p><p>But the cents and half cents were needed.&nbsp; A cent was real money back then.&nbsp; So they made them out of copper to make the size practical, but didn&#039;t make the legal tender so you were&#039;t forced to take something that was&#039;t &quot;real money&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>And this was not unique to the US.&nbsp; Copper coins in most if not all countries were not legal tender but merely a convenience for small change.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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