Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 2599460, member: 66&quot;]&quot;Legal Tender&quot; is a slippery concept&nbsp; In 19th century it was taken to mean that it HAD to be accepted, but that concept began slipping in the early to mid 20th century and became merely that it was a lawfully accepted form of payment the tendering of which constituted a legal offer of payment.&nbsp; And having made a legally acceptable offer of payment, late charges etc could not be added to the debt if the offering was declined.</p><p><br /></p><p>A couple things to add to Ikeigwin&#039;s list</p><p><br /></p><p>1851 the 3C silver was limited to I believe 60 cents in legal tender</p><p><br /></p><p>1853 all silver coinage less than $ was limited to $5 in legal tender</p><p><br /></p><p>The listings for 1874 and 1878 are wrong, the standard silver dollar was discontinued as a production coin during that period, but it never lost it&#039;s unlimited legal tender status</p><p><br /></p><p>Doug was incorrect about this but I think it was just an oversight</p><p><br /></p><p>The half dime was unlimited legal tender from the beginning of its coinage trough early 1853 when its legal tender status was reduced to $5 untill it was discontinued in 1873</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>In amounts above their limited legal tender limit , banks, merchants, or anyone else were under no obligation to accept them.&nbsp; They were a convenience.&nbsp; At that point in time the general belief was that only gold or silver were real money and coins had to contain almost their full face value in metal content.&nbsp; But a base metal coin with the full value in metal would be too large and unwieldy.&nbsp; And people tended to object to having to accept money that wasn&#039;t &quot;real money&quot;.&nbsp; Silver coins for amount less than 5 cents though would have the problem of being too small to use. But they had to have something to use for change and smaller purchases.&nbsp; (In purchasing power nothing smaller than a half dime for them would be like us having nothing smaller than a five dollar bill.)&nbsp; So coins of base metal with less than their intrinsic value were made for public convenience, but no one was forced to accept an unlimited amount of them.</p><p><br /></p><p>This did still cause problems for the merchants though.&nbsp; While they never had to accept a large amount from any of their customers, they did still accumulate in the til and if they weren&#039;t careful they could acquire enough of them that the banks would refuse them when they made their deposits.&nbsp; And the banks had similar problems because they would get too many of them and the Treasury wouldn&#039;t accept them.&nbsp; (When you were being paid more than a very small amount, EVERYONE wanted to receive &quot;real money&quot;.)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in