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 Replies: 9 / Views: 2,088 |
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New Member
United States
5 Posts |
Why did they make a$2.50 us coin?
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Valued Member
United States
54 Posts |
They did, in the gold $2 1/2 dollar gold pieces.
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Valued Member
United States
54 Posts |
My Guess would be the small size of the $1 dollar gold piece and that they were easily lost. I misread your post for my first reply, sorry.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5854 Posts |
Not exactly sure why but I don't think it is a result of the small size of the $1.00 gold because that was first minted in 1849 while the $2.50 was first minted in 1796. My guess would be that it might have been modeled after the Spanish denominations. The Spanish had the milled dollar which was equal to 8 reales and the 8 escudos both of which had their fractional coinage of 1,2,and 4. In the case of of the silver coinage, each real was called a bit and as a result the term "two bits" is still used to refer to the quarter. The eagle has a denomination of $10 and I guess to keep it consistent with the Spanish system, it would have made sense to them to have a quarter eagle($2.5) and half eagle($5).
Edited by D0ubl3Eagle
12/17/2011 2:16 pm
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Valued Member
Canada
153 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1510 Posts |
got that a couple of months ago..  Retired USAF 1983-2003
Edited by Coinstar
12/20/2011 12:29 am
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Bedrock of the Community
Australia
21786 Posts |
I note that the Half Eagle is approximately the same size as the British Sovereign.
It seems logical to me that the Half Sovereign equivalent would be the Quarter Eagle.
This would be in broad agreement with the size range of gold coins in other countries at the time.
In Australia, up to the start of WW1, the half Sovereign saw much more circulation than the full Sovereign, especially in the period from 1855 until about 1880. This can be evidenced by the greater amount of wear that the half sovereign sustained. The Sovereign was used more for international payments, and was less in the hands of the Australian colonial public.
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Valued Member
United States
71 Posts |
My guess would be with coin as THE currency of the time, people a little more well off were looking for ways to carry more value with less space and "jingle". I am pretty sure it was made of $2.50 worth of gold at that time.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
931 Posts |
Back then a dollar was a lot of money. If you were going to town for supplies it's possible that some people didn't want to carry more gold than they had to with hooligans and the like holding people up.
Two Fifty would have bought a lot of stuff (except in the Klondike).
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
695 Posts |
Members of CCF might find this information about the Quarter Eagle which is taken from the description in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, of interest: The quarter eagle was a coin issued by the United States with a denomination of two hundred and fifty cents, or two dollars and fifty cents. It was given its name in the Coinage Act of 1792, as a derivation from the US ten-dollar eagle coin. Its purchasing power in 1800 would be equivalent to $32.25 today. Designed by Robert Scot, the quarter eagle denomination was struck at the main mint at Philadelphia, and branch mints in Charlotte (1838-1859 not inclusive), New Orleans (1838-1857 only), Dahlonega (1839-1859), and in later years, San Francisco (1854-1879) and Denver (1911-1925). The first issues weighed 67.5 grains, fineness .9167, until the weight was modified to 64.5 grains and the fineness changed to .8992 by the Act of June 28, 1834. The Act of January 18, 1837 established a fineness of .900. This means that 1837 and later Quarter Eagles contain 0.121 Troy Oz. of gold content. The quarter eagle denomination was officially discontinued in 1933 with the removal of the United States from the Gold Standard, although the last date of issue was 1929. |
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Replies: 9 / Views: 2,088 |
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Posted 12/17/2011 10:28 am
