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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;willieboyd2, post: 5127282, member: 4910&quot;]<b>One learns something every day about early American numismatics.</b></p><p><br /></p><p>I did not know that the United States changed the size of the five dollar gold coin over the years.</p><p><br /></p><p>A major plot item in the book and film is that Johnny Fletcher is carrying an 1822 five dollar gold coin and puts it into a pay telephone nickel slot to keep the police from finding it on him. Pay telephones (in 1939) had slots for nickels, dimes, and quarters.</p><p><br /></p><p>From 1795 to 1829 the gold five dollar coin diameter was 25.0 mm and from 1839 to 1929 the diameter was 21.6 mm. The diameter of the United States five cent nickel coin has been 21.2 mm from 1883 to the present. Therefore an 1822 five dollar coin would not fit into the smaller nickel slot of a pay telephone.</p><p><br /></p><p>The United States quarter diameter has been 24.3 mm from 1831 to the present. Could the 25.0 mm 1822 gold coin have fit into the quarter slot? Probably not.</p><p><br /></p><p>The author and film producer probably assumed that a five dollar gold coin and a five cent nickel were the same size. The sizes were close enough after 1883 that crooks would sometimes gold-plate a five cent nickel to pass it as a five dollar coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>The film company used a foreign substitute coin in the film as US Treasury regulations (in 1946) prohibited the showing of US money in films. They probably picked a common French coin to match the title of the film.</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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