Appendix: US Coinage and Decimalization

US decimalization had little immediate domestic impact. Too poor and decentralized to prevent counterfeiting (early entrepreneurs even found it worthwhile to counterfeit large copper cents!), the US did not dare at first to establish underweight coins as legal tender. Instead, however, full-weight US Treasury issues of fractional silver currency (5-, 10-, 25-, and 50-cent pieces) were hoarded as bullion, or (like our silver dollars) exported by speculators in exchange for worn-down foreign coins. The almost-half-dollar-sized pre-1857 "large cent" was cumbersome and not generally accepted as legal tender. Small transactions might rely on barter, foreign coins, or, at times, private scrip that might, or might not, be solvent. In 1853, Congress finally gained confidence enough to shrink US fractional silver coins by 7.5%, making it more profitable to circulate them than to hoard them. In 1857, the US finally demonetized foreign coins, except as bullion, and issued a new, convenient-sized "small cent." This rapidly gained popularity, and reckonings based on "shillings" (25 cents), "reals" or "bits" (12.5 cents), and "medios" (6.25 cents) finally disappeared.

A. Great Britain

British currency ("Sterling")		approximate 1800s US value (in gold)
	1 farthing	$0	.005
4 farthings =	1 penny (copper) symbol = "d" ("denarius")	$0	.02
4 pence (pennies) =	1 groat (silver)	$0	.08
12 pence (pennies) =	1 shilling (silver) symbol = "s" ("solidus")	$0	.25
2 shillings =	1 florin (silver)	$0	.50
5 shillings =	1 crown (silver)	$1	.25
20 shillings =	1 pound (gold) ("sovereign") symbol = "£" ("libra")	$5
21 shillings =	1 guinea (gold)	$5	25

Note: the actual par value for the pound was $4.8667 ($4.86 2/3) [Feavearyear, p. 383], meaning the dollar values given above are slightly overestimated.

The English penny had originally been a small silver coin weighing one "pennyweight" (1/20 troy ounce, or $0.0645), while the "pound" had originally been a troy pound of silver (12 troy ounces, or $15.48). Over the centuries, their values had fallen to the $0.02 and $5 figures shown here, but the pound was still worth 240 pennies.

The 20-shilling sovereign replaced the slightly heavier guinea as Britain's principal gold coin after the Napoleonic wars. Prices for luxury items sometimes continued to be quoted in guineas, however.
The guinea, first issued ca. 1663, had originally been intended for a 20-shilling value, but an unexpected increase in the value of gold against silver made it worth more from the very start. [Feavearyear, pp. 88, 120]

In Spain itself, these valuations lasted until the 1830s.

As the Spanish-American colonies became independent (1817-1825), many of them kept this system until the 1850s, and then replaced the 8-real piece with a decimal peso of 100 cents, eg:

French currency		1800s US value (in gold)		source of valuation
	1 denier
3 deniers =	1 liard
12 deniers =	1 sol, or "sou"	$0	.01	E
20 sous =	1 livre (silver)	$0	.20	E
120 sous =	1 écu (silver)	$1	.20	E
4 écus =	1 Louis d'or (gold)	$4	.80	E

Note the same ratios (12 and 20) between the French "denier," "sol," and "livre" as for the British "penny," "shilling," and "pound" (though the French currency had lost more value over the centuries). This 12-and-20 pattern was also seen, before Napoleon's time, in the coinage of many Italian states ("denaro," "soldo," and "lira").

After 1794:

French currency		1800s US value (in gold)		source of valuation
	1 centime	$0	.002	E
100 centimes =	1 franc (silver)	$0	.20	E
20 francs =	1 Napoleon (gold)	$4		E

In 1865, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium established the Latin Monetary Union, making their currencies interchangeable. Greece joined in 1868. Later adherents, who did not formally join, included Bulgaria (1882?), Romania (1870?), Serbia (1875?), and Spain (1869?). World War I (1914-1918) brought differing rates of inflation to these countries, forcing a dissolution of the union.

Note: the French franc and British pound may have been pegged to each other at 25/1. (I am not sure which valuation came first.) A comparison of French and US gold coins yields a value for the franc of $0.193 which, allowing for computation error, and multiplied by 25, comes very close to the British pound's valuation of $4.86 2/3.

The "den'ga," Russia's oldest coin (and obsolete since 1914), has, in its plural form "den'gi", become synonymous with "money."

What looks like a sharp fall in the ruble's value in 1894 was actually a strengthening, as finance minister Sergei Witte put Russia on the gold standard. Witte's reforms ushered in two decades of uneven, but nevertheless impressive economic growth.

The 15-kopek coin, a weird denomination, remained popular in Russia up until the Soviet collapse (1991).

The Russian phrase "ni za grosh" ("not even for a grosz") came to mean "for nothing at all."

Although "zloty" means "golden" in Polish, the zloty was never a gold coin. The Poles had adopted some German coin names (30 groschen = 1 "gulden" or "guilder"), and "zloty" is simply a translation of "gulden." The gulden (or "florin") of various German states had originally been a gold coin comparable to the ducat, but over the centuries it had depreciated to a silver coin.