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Message:: [QUOTE="GDJMSP, post: 914060, member: 112"]There were quarter eagles - $2.50. Half eagles - $5. Eagles - $10 and double eagles - $20. And gold was not common. In fact it was rarely seen outside of banks or for use in trade. For example, a ship comes into port at New Orleans. Vendors would pay the ship owner in gold for the cargo because of the size of sums involved. But ordinary people rarely even had a dollar let alone gold coins. Most public transactions were made with much smaller coins. There was the half reale, reale, 2 reales, 4 reales and 8 reales. In US coin that was roughly equivalent to the nickel, dime, quarter, half dollar and dollar. Then there was copper coinage, half cent and cent. And when small change was scarce, as it almost always was, people would cut the larger silver coins into smaller pieces called bits and use them. note - the Spanish coinage was not equal to the nickel and dime. A half reale was actuall 6 cents and the reale 12 cents. The others were equal.[/QUOTE]