Over the years I have posted various money oddities that I have encountered here and there and today's post is about one of them.
Meet the Silver Center Cent:
(public domain)
Looks like a coin with a butt plug if you ask me ð
It was produced in 1792 but it only remained a pattern coin, meaning it wasn't approved for release but produced to evaluate the design.
The design was proposed in a time when the general consensus was that the intrinsic value of coins should be approximately equal to the face value. Woah imagine that... It almost makes cense sense ðĪŠð
But silver being expensive and everything would mean the coin would have to be super small to be practical. An alternative option would be copper, but that would mean a weight of 17.1 g which was deemed to heavy for regular every day use.
And here comes the solution proposed by the silver center cent. A regular copper coin with just enough silver in the middle to give it value.
If the design came to pass the silver would comprise 3â4 of the cent and the copper the rest.
The idea was cool but didn't came to pass due to production reasons.
Today only 12 original examples are known to exist. There are also two specimens known but they have fake plugs.
Naturally, due to being old, rare and odd these coins are super expensive. For example, one graded PCGS MS61 was sold in an online auction for $1.15 million in 2012. Holy molly ððĪ
And this is the quick run down of the silver center cent. Here's a link to Wikipedia if you'd like to read more on it!
If hive hits 100$ I am getting one. And that's a promise ðððĪŠ
Fun Numismatics Posts
Enjoyed the post? Here is some more fun silver/numismatics themed content I have written in the past that you may enjoy: