The U.S. used to have half-pennies.
Cash just isn’t what it used to be in America, and that especially goes for pennies, which are often more convenient to drop in a take-a-penny, leave-a-penny tray than your own pocket. Many countries have even ditched their 1-cent coins, including Canada, Australia, Sweden, and New Zealand, and the United States may be next.
For now, the penny survives as the smallest unit of U.S. currency — but that wasn’t always the case. When the U.S. Mint was established in 1792, it made 10 denominations of coins, and the smallest was the half-cent. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton proposed the half-cent for two reasons: so America’s poorest residents could buy smaller quantities of items for less money, and so merchants could price their wares more competitively in smaller increments. Average wages in the 1790s were around $65 a year, so a half-penny made sense for purchasing everyday items.
Half-cent coins declined in popularity over the next few decades, and their production waned until they were discontinued in 1857. By that time, they were mostly used by the Post Office, which still made change in half-cent amounts. But not long after they were taken out of the mix, half-pennies generated new interest as collector’s items, and appeared in numismatic publications as early as 1869.
