Some coins, notably from Austria-Hungary and Latin America have employed denomination fractions such as 5/10ths or 2/4ths instead of 1/2. I've always found this curious, especially since they were used in the same times and regions where the majority of coins used the regular half fraction. Wondering what the possible reasons for this might be. Thoughts?
Maybe it was because the people from those regions could count to ten, and they wanted to brag on themselves. Chris
I have no idea what specific coins you're talking about but the only reason I can think of would be if there were other fractional denomination coins of the same parent coin. Just as an example, a 5/10 thaler and a 3/10 thaler. Or a 1/4, 2/4 and a 3/4 - like that. I'm saying that because I know some fractionals were minted as small 16ths and 32nds.
But those fractionals were were not minted as 4/64ths or 2/128ths. This is what gets me stumped. And the coins in question, for example Austria and Hungary 5/10 Kreuzer were the smallest circulating denomination at the time. The Latin American coins make no sense either. 2/4 real or 5/10, when there are already 1/2 reales. It's not the denomination, but rather how the denomination is expressed that is the oddity to me.
I did some checking and the only thing I could find out is that there were sweeping changes involving politics and religion in Austria after 1851, the last year the 1/2 kreuzer was minted. So I suspect that the change from 1/2 to 5/10 was in some way to signify the difference between the two regimes. After 1851 there were no 1/2 kreuzers minted and it was not until 1858 that the 5/10 keuzers appeared. And they continued to be minted from then on.
In 1857 Austria replaced the old "convention" gulden with a new "ö.W." (Austrian currency) gulden, at a rate of 100 conv. gulden = 105 ö.W. gulden. Contrary to the old gulden (1 G. = 60 Kreuzer), the new one was decimal (1 G. = 100 Kreuzer). Maybe writing "5/10" was a way of emphasizing this change? Just a guess ... Christian