English Penny Sized Copper Coins

No English counties issued coins, though some private individuals or businesses issued tokens with county names.

In addition to French 10 centimes, look also at Argentina 2 centavos 1882-96,Belgium 10 centimes,
Greece 10 lepta 1869-1882, Italian 10 centesimi,Spain 8 maravedis 1801-1833, Spain 5 centimos 1866-68, Spain 10 centimos 1870-79 and other British colonies.

Refer to a Krause catalog, looking for pennies of British and it's Commonwealth countries. A very old and outdated copy of Krause bought cheaply, is good enough for this.
Types sets can be built up using a range of denominations from halfpenny to crown.

I have a type set of about 40 bronze pennies of Britain and it's Commonwealth countries.
Interesting extensions to this collection comprise British pure copper pennies of the 19th century of even larger module, and silver pennies that extend back over a thousand years, and include Maundy silver pennies as well. I have a few of these.

I also have a type set of florins of Britain and it's Commonwealth countries, comprising over forty silver examples and also perhaps twice that many in cupronickel of latter dates. It took me about 15 years to build the set. Most of them came from dealers' junk bins, but that was as long as thirty years ago.

Australia still issues low mintage cupronickel commemorative Twenty Cent coins (which replaced the Florin of the same module and face value) into current circulation. That keeps my florin / Twenty Cent collection active.

The reason for the change from large to small cents was threefold. First to bring the coinage more into line with US coinage size wise.Second to save money on copper which had risen in price and third the First World War had cost all countries huge sums and costs needed to be cut to help pay for it. Eliminating the five cent silver followed within 18 months and the sterling silver standard for silver coinage ended January 1 st 1920 when the silver coins were debased to 80 per cent.. Hope this helps.

The following British colonies and dominions issued 1 penny coins in the 20th century:

Australia, British West Africa, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Great Britain, Guernsey, Ireland, Jamaica, Jersey, Malawi, New Guinea, New Zealand, Nigeria, Rhodesia & Nyasaland, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and Zambia.

Of these, only some are "large penny-sized bronze coins": Australia, Great Britain, Guernsey, Ireland, Jersey, New Zealand, South Africa. The coins from Guernsey and Jersey are denominated in local currency units ("8 doubles" and "1/12 of a shilling"). The African and Pacific Islands coins are smaller and/or holed. The Jamaican ones were made of cupronickel for cultural reasons.

Finally, there are coins from non-sterling currencies that are similar in size to the penny. The East Caribbean 2 cents is an excellent example. Another is the Cyprus piastre, worth 1/9th of a shilling and made of bronze up to 1931. Slightly smaller, the 1 cent coins from Straits Settlements, Hong Kong, British Honduras/Belize, Canada and Newfoundland might also be of interest. The British-Indian half-anna was a large copper coin that was discontinued for circulation in 1877, though some of the princely states continued to issue the denomination as a large copper coin (such as Hyderabad).


Pre-WWI France was the lead country of the Latin Monetary Union, an early attempt at making a Europe-wide interchangeable currency system. The gold and silver coins of Union countries were all of the same size and fineness, but the base-metal coins were non-standardized and each country was free to go their own way. Some closely followed the French base-metal size ratios, however, including Spain, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia.

If giant bronzes are your thing, two countries that really went for it (particularly in the 1800s) are Brazil and Russia. Pre-1855 Sweden also has some impressive copper coins - and that's not even including the platmynt (plate-money), giant copper slab-ingot-coins made back in the 1600s.

The bronze 2-mils coins issued by Palestine from 1927-47 are nearly penny size.

One of my favourite penny-size coins is the Argentinian 2-centavos from the 1880s and 1890s.

Another quite big fairly modern bronze coin is the Jordanian 10-fils.

Canada large cent also includes 1858 and 59 :)

yep yep, quite right. corrected. Still looking for that 1858 for my collection