An official website of the United States government
Here's how you know
Official websites use .gov A
.gov website belongs to an official government
organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A
lock (
) or https:// means you've safely connected to
the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official,
secure websites.
Once it was hard to tell a penny from a dime... Although they are different colors, pennies and dimes are very close in size. In 1943, copper was needed for war materials, so pennies were made out of zinc-coated steel. Because the color was silvery, it was easy to mistake a penny for a dime. Fortunately, pennies were only made that way for one year.We used to trade gold, silver, and copper.... A 1792 law directed American money to be made of gold, silver and copper. Gold was used in the $10, $5, and $2.50 pieces. The dollar, half dollar, quarter, dime, and half dime were composed of silver. The cent and half cent were made of copper.Groove-y edges made them harder to copy.... The dollar, half-dollar, quarter, and 10-cent (dime) denominations were originally produced from precious metals (gold and silver). The reeded edges were created to make sure no one would alter the coins and try to file off the edges to retrieve some of the precious metals.Transporting coins can turn into a real cliffhanger.... Legend has it that a shipment of dimes en route to the San Francisco Mint was attacked in southern Utah in the early 1900s. The shipment of dimes supposedly fell over a cliff. Though many people have tried to find the money, no evidence of this shipment has ever been found.Nickels, dimes, and quarters are pickled before they’re minted... It might sound strange, but the blanks used to make these coins really are pickled. They're not soaked in vinegar, though, like the pickled cucumbers you get on hamburgers. Instead, these copper-nickel blanks are soaked in a special chemical solution. This "pickling" washes and polishes the blanks.
