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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 9132, member: 57463&quot;]You got some quick replies, none of which was totally wrong.&nbsp; Allow me to suggest that your questions can be answered pretty quickly if you build your numismatic library.&nbsp; It is easy to spend your money on coins coins coins coins wonderful coins, but without KNOWLEDGE, the coins are about as interesting as lock washers.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you live in or near a large city, or if you visit one, shopping the used bookstores can enhance your collecting experience.&nbsp; Detroit is GREAT for used numismatic references; Columbus was mediocre; Albuquerque was terrible.&nbsp; So, shopping can be a challenge, sometimes.&nbsp; You can find books for sale in the coin newspapers and at coin shows, of course.&nbsp; The two that any collector of American coins needs are THE US MINT AND COINAGE by Donald Taxay and THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF US AND COLONIAL COINS by Walter Breen.</p><p><br /></p><p>1. Penny probably comes from a Germanic word that also gave us the word &quot;pawn.&quot;&nbsp; The coin itself originated in western Europe during the dark ages.&nbsp; I suggest also a link to the word &quot;pensa&quot; meaning &quot;weight.&quot; </p><p><br /></p><p>(The word &quot;penny&quot; is _NOT_ related to the word &quot;denarius.&quot;&nbsp; However, because the coins were the same size or served the same purpose, the d for denarius came to be the symbol for the penny.&nbsp; In the middle ages, bankers solved the problem of dealing with a plethora of local coinages by inventing the Pounds-Shillings-Pence notation for bookkeeping.)</p><p><br /></p><p>3.&nbsp; &quot;Dime&quot; does originate in the same word sense as &quot;ten.&quot;&nbsp; However, it is specific to a certain time and place.&nbsp;&nbsp; The story is in Breen.&nbsp; In 1585, a man named Simon Steven van Brugghe wrote a book in Dutch and French explaining why a decimal system of coinage has advantages.&nbsp; </p><p>The word in French of that time was &quot;Disme&quot; from which we got &quot;Dime&quot; in the 1830s.&nbsp; In the early American Republic, if you read the Congressional records (both before and after the current constitution), the word appears as &quot;disme&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp; and was probably pronounced &quot;deem.&quot; (As late as the mid-1800s, many German states (duchies, principalities, etc.) and free cities struck coins not on tenths but on fourths, sixths, etc.) You can find them in your Krause world catalogs.</p><p><br /></p><p>4. Dollar comes from &quot;thaler.&quot;&nbsp; Tal or Thal in other German languages is like the traditional English word &quot;dell&quot; or &quot;dale.&quot;&nbsp; It means &quot;valley.&quot;&nbsp; Big silver coins from &quot;Joachimsthal&quot; (James Valley) in Bohemia were issued in 1519.&nbsp; They were widely copied in size after silver from the Americas flowed through Spain and into Europe.&nbsp; The word &quot;dollar&quot; was applied&nbsp; in the English/Dutch lands to the Spanish 8 reales of the same size as the talers. The Maria Theresia Thaler is still restruck today. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Michael</p><p>ANA R-162953[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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