Doctor Steuss wrote: ↑Thu Aug 25, 2022 5:15 pm
Hopping on with some numismatic fun, following Rick's post.
During Joseph Smith's life, the US was still utilizing a 1/2 cent coin.
I don't know how much exposure Joseph Jr. would have had to Continental currency (CC), but it was likely something Joseph Sr. would have been familiar with. Congress did the last round of issuing CC
in 1779. There was a crazy wide range of denominations with CC. Most of it was done as denominations of a dollar. Probably the coolest (to me) was the 1/3 dollar. Getting back change in coins must've been an adventure. The lowest was a 1/6 dollar note.
Incidentally, beginning with the very first issue of CC, there was a $7 bill.
The values of CC were calculated in relation to the shilling (depending on state).
(Unrelated, but still fun -- there was a return to notes representing fractions of a dollar (aptly named, fractional currency) during the civil war. The 15c with a
bust of Columbia is probably my favorite)
Even in my time, in Britain (pre-decimalization), the shilling was an interesting piece of currency. Officially, the pound and the penny were the units of currency. But the shilling - worth 12 pence = 1/20 of a pound - had a special place in everyday transactions, because people talked about the less-than-a-pound amounts in terms of shillings and pence (pennies), and not as fractions of a pound. Colloquially, a shilling was often called a "bob", with the same word used as singular and plural. Five shillings was "five bob", not "five bobs".
So, for example, if something cost 16 pence, the price would be referred to as one shilling and 4 pence - or 1s 4p. To say this out loud you would often not mention the shilling at all - you'd say "one and fourpence".
There were also half-pound (10s) notes; 1/8 pound pieces; 1/10 pound pieces; six pence and three pence pieces; as well as pennies (about the size of a US silver dollar); half-pennies; and one-fourth pennies. These were called, respectively: 10 shillings; two-and-sixpence (colloquially "half a dollar"!!); 2 shillings colloquially "two bob"); sixpence colloquially "half a bob"); thruppence (2 distinct coin types); penny; ha-penny (soft 'a'); and farthing.
Another indication of the importance of the shilling was the guinea - a unit of money that was worth 21 shillings. I remember the guinea as a "gentleman's" unit, and more English than Scottish. Bets, club memberships, livestock prices, and real estate transactions might be quoted in guineas rather than pounds.
Learning to make change, and to do currency calculations, was interesting.
Edit for clarity.
