Why are dimes so small?

[mske]

Dimes are worth more than nickles or pennies, yet are smaller than them. How come the sizes of coins are not in relation to their value?

[MEBuckner]

From the U.S. Mint:

Why is the one-cent coin (the penny) larger than the ten-cent coin (the dime)? What determines the sizes of our coins? The sizes of United States coins can help you to identify each one, but have nothing to do with their value. The first U.S. five-cent coins (nickels) were made of silver, and were smaller than the ten-cent coins (dimes) in circulation today. You may be interested to know that our coinage system, to a certain extent, has grown out of custom or, in other words, out of daily use. When United States coins were first produced in 1793, our standard coin was the silver dollar. The United States Mint produced the rest of our coins (except the one-cent coin) in a proportionate metallic content to the dollar, with the sizes regulated accordingly. The half-dime (or five-cent denomination) had 1/20th the amount of silver contained in the dollar. Our 10-cent coin contained 1/10th the amount of silver, the quarter-dollar coin (the quarter) contained 1/4th the amount, and the half-dollar coin contained 1/2 the amount. Mint officials recognized the need for a larger five-cent coin because the half-dime was exactly half the size of the dime. This proved to be too small for convenient handling by the public. Adoption of the five-cent coin as we know it today occurred in 1866. The Mint increased the coin’s size and changed its metallic content from silver and copper to a combination of copper and nickel.

Basically, dimes are still the same size as they were when they were silver (even though they haven’t actually been made out of silver in years). Nickels and pennies, on the other hand, were made out of “base” metals even back when other coins (dimes and quarters on up) were made out of precious metals. Note that nickels and pennies don’t have the ridged edges that dimes or quarters do; those were originally to prevent people from shaving off a little of the silver, which no one would bother to do with a coin made of copper or nickel.

[Sigene]

dimes, quarters, half dollars, and dollars were all originally made only of silver. I believe the price of silver was set by the government (WAG). Anyway, $1 worth of silver was found in a dollar, a fifty cent piece was half the weight of a dollar, and a dime contained 1/10th the weight of a dollar. A nickle and a penny don’t contain silver so they do not follow the scheme. Now, of course, the “silver” coins are not all silver, but in order to preserve continuity, the sizes all remained the same… Also I’m referring to the dollars up to and including the Eisenhower dollars…Someone got some courage somewhere and made the new dollars a different size

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

*Originally posted by Sigene *
**dimes, quarters, half dollars, and dollars were all originally made only of silver. I believe the price of silver was set by the government (WAG). Anyway, $1 worth of silver was found in a dollar, a fifty cent piece was half the weight of a dollar, and a dime contained 1/10th the weight of a dollar. A nickle and a penny don’t contain silver so they do not follow the scheme. Now, of course, the “silver” coins are not all silver, but in order to preserve continuity, the sizes all remained the same… Also I’m referring to the dollars up to and including the Eisenhower dollars…Someone got some courage somewhere and made the new dollars a different size **

Actually, for most of the time while U.S. coins were still being made out of silver, the silver in them was worth a lot less than the coins themselves. I have a 1960 edition of The World Book which says that the silver in a dime was only worth about three-and-a-half cents. This only changed a few years later, when general, chronic inflation kicked in and the price of silver rose sharply. This resulted in silver coinage being mostly discontinued in 1964.

“Free silver” advocates in the 19th century wanted “free coinage” of silver, which basically meant that if you brought the Mint a dollar’s weight of silver, they would make it into a dollar for you. If the silver was only actually worth 35 or 50 cents, then that represented quite a nice profit for you. So obviously people with silver interests were very much in favor of this idea, but others countered that such a policy would be inflationary. Which of course it would…just like printing more paper dollars.