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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Hobo, post: 607318, member: 11521&quot;]Jimmy, </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I think what Conder was trying to get across is that Cents have always been &quot;legal money&quot; (meaning they have some assigned value) but could be refused for transactions above a certain amount. Cents were legal tender for small transactions but not for large transactions. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>If a customer wanted to pay for a purchase using all Cents the merchant could refuse if the amount exceeded the limit. I think the reason for this is that at the time the intrinsic value (melt value) of a Cent was less than one cent but the intrinsic value of silver and gold coins was very close to their face value. Therefore a merchant could not be forced to accept coins with intrinsic values of less than their face value above a small limit. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>If you could go back in time to 1860 you would find that people did not automatically trust the US Government when it came to their money. When someone accepted a&nbsp; Half Dollar or a Quarter Eagle he expected the coin to be WORTH 50 cents or $2.50 respectively based on its silver or gold content. Basically the coins the Mint produced back then were hunks of precious metal that were formed into shapes and designs and that the Mint warranted had a precious metal content worth their stated value. (This was not the case for copper and nickel coins.) People back then wanted to know that if the US Government collapsed their coins still held their value in their metal content. (Imagine what they would think of our coins and unbacked paper money today!!)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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