What is the largest coin ever minted?

[Terminus_Est]

@RickJay

Well, it would certainly be easier than carrying a cow.

In Soviet Russia, cow carries you!

…oh, wait!

[Lemur866]

Those Yap “coins” are more analgous to Pacific Northwest indian coppers. They are ceremonial items that are exchanged during important occasions. While they have many of the qualities of money, they aren’t money in the modern sense of the word. The main problem is that the Yap coins and coppers don’t have universally agreed on value. They are instead analgous to high-value luxury goods like gemstones that are valuable but not intrinsicly valuable and can be exchanged, but they aren’t money or even key goods.

[Wakinyan]

@RickJay

Well, it would certainly be easier than carrying a cow.

Good one.

[DrDeth]

@Polycarp

To rephrase the question a bit more narrowly, it would have to be (a) a coin struck by a government in at least de facto control of an area in which it is accepted as the legitimate government, which (b) is intended for general circulation, not purely for investment value, and which (c) is carried from point to point as a medium of exchange (i.e., is “money” in the traditional definition) rather than held at some specific point and commonly known to be the property of X (gold coin in bank vault, Yapese stone coin).

For the U.S., it would have to be the $50 gold coins privately struck under the auspices of the U.S. Assay Office which later served as the models for the $50 commemorative gold coin struck at the Panama Pacific Exposition. (Samclem, doublecheck me on this – I’d consider they meet my criteria and did circulate, and that we’ve done nothing higher for circulation.)

I agree. California also minted $50 gold coins, which were private mnted but under the auspsice of the US Assay Office, so they are somewhat “official”. You can see some in SF at some of the Bank museums there. I have heard rumors of a $100 gold coin- Ca requested one form the US Mint and I have heard rumours some were made by the State or private mints.

http://www.coinsite.com/content/articles/TerritorialCalifornia.asp
“Although Congress failed to authorize a branch mint for San Francisco, in 1850, as a stop-gap measure, it approved an Assay Office in its stead. The government contract to produce fifty-dollar ingots was awarded to Moffat & Co. with Augustus Humbert as U.S. Assayer. In 1851, the management team of Moffat and Humbert struck the impressive octagonal fifty-dollar gold pieces with their “engine turned” reverses. After James King’s intrigues effectively stopped further private production of small denomination coins, in March, 1851, Moffat petitioned the federal government for permission to issue pieces smaller than the fifty-dollar “slugs.” For political reasons, permission was at first denied, as this would have turned the Assay Office into a de facto mint. The following year, however, the Treasury Department relented, and the Assay Office minted ten and twenty-dollar coins in 1852 and 1853. After Moffat retired in February, 1852, the Assay Office contract was taken over by his former partners, Curtis, Perry & Ward. In December, 1853, the U. S. Assay Office was closed to make way for the new San Francisco Mint. Unlike the other private issues, the semi-official Assay Office coins never suffered from widespread melting, and many examples survive to this day. At one time, two collectors, George Walton and John A. Beck, each accumulated more than one hundred of the fifty-dollar “slugs.””

Now you can get higher value coins, but since Gold is 20X+ the value they are still smaller.