... that coins do not follow a size increment equal to their value? Why is a dime smaller than a 5 cent piece and current dollars smaller than a half? I enjoy the larger dollar size and dispite the need to be able to feed vending machines, I think the Prez dollars should have gone back to the size of Morgans, Peace and Ikes.
Before the change to clad in 1965, dimes were 90% silver and therefore more valuable than the larger nickel 5-cent pieces. I don't have any idea why the mint produces small size dollar coins. Maybe they wanted to try something different after Ikes failed to circulate.
Originally, coin money was denominated by weight. A dollar was 371.25 grains of silver by weight, etc. So the relative values of the metals impacted the size of the coins. Now that money is intangible, the Mint could proclaim wood or plastic to be more valuable than copper or nickel and everyone would just go along with it. So size is irrelevant.
The dime was silver, valued at 1/10 of a dollar. Originally there was a half dime, at 1/2 the size of the dime. The intro of the 5 cent coin (nickel as we call it today) was made with 5 cents value in metal at the time. The dime lost its silver in 1964 (actually 1965) but the size was kept for vending machine purposes, and tradition. There is now a nominal metallic value.
for a little more info on the intro of susan b. anthony dollars...pcgs library article...looking back at susan b. anthony dollars march 7, 2000..short but interesting article
Ok they have explained the dime nickel reason, now here's the answer for the current dollar. The Ike dollar was a failure as far as a circulation coin went. So the government paid for a survey of the coinage system to be done by Triangle Research Institute. (So far the government has paid to have this survey done at least four times, paying millions of dollars each time. All four times they have come back with the exact same recommendations.) TRI advised: Eliminate the cent and the half dollar. The Ike dollar is too large in size to be popular with the public. Create a new smaller sized dollar coin slightly larger than the quarter and make it distinctive in color and design. Eliminate the dollar note. We've paid TRI tens of millions of dollars for this advice, FOUR TIMES! (How many of us could have told them to do that for ten bucks?) We ignored their advice and we still have the cent. We stopped making the half dollar for circulation but it took us 17 years after it was first advised and we still make them for collectors. We made the small dollar after five years, but ignored the advice to make the color distinctive. After twenty more years we followed that part of the advice. We still have not eliminated the dollar note. So after 33 years and tens of millions of dollars the only part of the advice we paid for that we have accepted is to make a small dollar with a distinctive color.
