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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 741327, member: 66&quot;]Legal Tender act of 1933?&nbsp; Thanks&#039; I wasn&#039;t aware of that one.&nbsp; I knew about the legal tender clause in the coinage Act of 1965 but didn&#039;t realize the half cents and trade dollars had received their legal&nbsp; tender status (or in the case of the Trade dollar had it restored), before that date.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yes the large cent was not legal tender during the entire period of its production.&nbsp; Limited legal tender was not granted to cents until 1864 and then only up to ten cents.</p><p><br /></p><p>Why did they keep making them even though they weren&#039;t legal tender?&nbsp; Because they were needed in everyday commerce.&nbsp; While it is true they could be refused, in practice they never were because there were not enough of them to create a nuisance.&nbsp; The entire output of the mint since its beginning amounted to only a couple of coins per person so there was seldom any problem of having too many coins.&nbsp; In fact there was still a chronic shortage.</p><p><br /></p><p>The lack of legal tender for the cent did not become a problem until the introduction of the SMALL cent in 1857.&nbsp; The huge production of flying eagle cents combined with the withdrawal of the large cents and the foreign silver from circulation&nbsp; made the non-legal tender cent the most common coin in circulation and in such quantities that they did become a nuisance which did result in them being refused by merchants and banks.</p><p><br /></p><p>People tend to think that a coin or note has to be legal tender in order to circulate but that isn&#039;t always true.&nbsp; Sometimes items will circulate simply because the people need SOMETHING they can use as a&nbsp; medium of exchange.&nbsp; In the early years of this country many items were used as money that had no legal tender status.&nbsp; Of the state coinages only that of New Jersy was legal tender, the Fugio cent, the half cent and the large cent were not legal tender, and during the &quot;era of Hard Times&quot; 1837 to 44 and the Civil War the millions of privately issued tokens wer not legal tender.&nbsp; All of the paper money issued by private and State Banks used before 1862 was not legal tender.&nbsp; But the eonomy of the country would have ground to a halt without it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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