This has bothered me for well over 80 years now and I'm not even that old. Our monitary system is .01, .05, .10, .25, .50 and 1.00. Most coins are proportional in size versus the value. The Cent is smaller than the Nickel. The Nickel is smaller than the Quarter. Quarter smaller than Half Dollar and at one time the dollar was really big. Now the Dime. Why is the Dime the smallest coin? Why is it smaller than a Cent? Why is the Dime not a little larger than a Nickel? Wouldn't it make CENTS to have all our coins in size according to value? Even a blind person could easily tell what is what if all coins were in size the same as value. In the far past we had a Large Cent and that was corrected to be smaller so why didn't they fix the Dime? Now that I think of it why isn't our paper money also bigger by the type of denomination. Each bill should be bigger pending what they are worth. WOW, how big would a ten thousand dollar bill be?
No idea really, but would it have to do with when dimes were silver? Maybe that was about 10 cents worth od silver?
From the 18th century up until the early 1870's the value of coins was very closely related to the value of the metal found in them. half cents and cents for copper, then trimes, half dimes, dimes, quarters, halves, and dollars were in proportion size-wise to each other since they were all silver and the gold dollars, quarter eagles, 3 dollars, half eagles, eagles and double eagles were in proportion to each oher since they were all gold coins. The advent of the 3 cent nickel and the 5 cent nickel followed the old method and since they were less intrinsically valuable than the silver coins they were made to be larger. As the denominations wee slowly weeded down to what we have today silver got expensive again and it was removed from coinage. To keep the simplicity of people being able to recognize their change, the sizes were left the same as they had been.
England had lots of problems making low denomination coins that wouldn't be counterfeited. At the end of the 18th Century, one penny and two penny coins containing close to face value's worth of copper were issued, using a steam press to strike them with deeply incused design elements. The two pence coin is a massive thing, weighing two ounces, called a "cartwheel".
Carl, Here is what we Israelis have to put up with: Our largest diameter coin is the bronze 1/2 Sheqel while the 1Sheqel coin is even smaller than the 5 Agorot one (and it's 20 times it's worth). Basically I think the size of our coins, which don't carry such a long history as the US ones (we use them since 1984 - when the country stabilized the hyper inflation and introduced the current monetary system), is derived from the easiness of their identification by buyers and sellers. Thus they serve their purpose. Following the same logic, I think your dime and cent are so easy to be identified so they don't create problems to the end user. Avi
Another reason why the "odd" sizes of US coins are not really confusing is that they have very few denominations in everyday life - basically the penny, the nickel, the dime and the quarter. The half dollar is virtually non-existent as far as I can tell, and the dollar coin is much less popular than the $1 note. In the European currency union, for example, there are eight coin denominations. Like in Israel, we have three different "alloy groups", and within each group, a piece with a higher face value is larger than one with a lower value. So your setup makes a lot of sense from what I am used to, except maybe that the size difference between the 1 sheqel and 5 sheqalim coins could be a little smaller. Christian
Christian, When they first issued the 5 Sheqel coin it looked in proportion with it's value Although inflation here is not high (I think we are more or less the Europe standard) it is now a bit too big for us. The 10 Sheqels coin is extremely convenient and it's value is represented well in it's size and metal. I guess all in all we get used to the size, shape and alloy and then the use of coins become easy. Avi
Take two coins, a 1935 Silver dollar, and a 1979 SBA dollar, compare them, handle them, you'll get a good idea, and that's only 44 years of time.
OK, so what the_cave_troll said and everything else. So what? Still dosen't explain why way back when the sizes and even the material of our coinage wasn't all standardized. If all our coins in the US were made of the same material then the sizes could have been standarized. I know it's way to late now, but back then there were no gum ball machines to worry about, no toll roads, no pop machines, no coin counters, so I just think the government wasn't thinking clearly. Possibly alcholic drinks were being utilized more frequently than thoughts of our coinage sizes. Back when they changed the large cent they should have fixed all the coins. Could have made all out of the same material. As to the dollar bill being sized as it's value, that would be great. Then you could hide them under yoiu watch, use as an ear plug, hide under our SBA dollar coins.
Cents were in a different category back when they got rid of the large size version. They weren't completely legal tender (and they still aren't for amounts exceeding twenty-five cents). The silver and gold coins were supposed to have intrinsic value, not to be mere tokens.
One Agora... Don't forget how small the 1 Agora was....or for that matter some of the old aluminum 1 agora coins. The 5 Agora is seldom seen in transactions today as well due to its value...(equivilent to a little over a US cent. Rounding isn't a problem for most people.
Downsize the Cent II Has the option been put forth to downsize the cent as we did in the 1800s? Why not make the cent the same size as the eurocent? I am sure this would save the treasury some money.
No suttable metal could have intrinsic value and range from half a cent to $10, which is what you had in the 1790's, actually foreign coins circulated widely until the 1850's. The 3 metals used varied in size to give the coin something close to it's value as metal. I guess you could do it now with bi-metallic coins, but not with the same material for all.
