The amazing shrinking quarter

[evileatinggrasshopper]

NL-Nickel Lady
Me-Me!

A seemingly normal woman gave me a dollar for the paper and I gave her a quarter change.

NL-Excuse me miss, but you gave me a nickel
Me-*looking at it* Uh, no ma'am, that's a quarter.
NL-But it's so small!
Me-It's a regular quarter. Coworker giving an odd look
NL-Oh I see, it does say 25 cents on it. I guess quarters shrank recently?
Me-Uh.....no..
NL-I had no idea they made small quarters now, I guess you learn something new everyday!

It was a perfectly normal quarter. Either her eyes or her mind is going. My coworker and I laughed about it when she left. Still convinced that quarters were now smaller

[Chromatix]

To be fair, some of the British coins are smaller than they used to be.

The "new penny" (ie. decimal penny) is smaller than the "old penny" (pre-decimal), even though the "new penny" is worth more (there were 240 old pence in the pound) and was originally made of the same metal.

The 10p and 5p coins were made the same size, shape and composition as the old two-shilling and one-shilling coins, because they were worth exactly the same amount - they were just stamped differently. But later, to make sure the old shilling coins were taken out of circulation, they shrunk the 10p and 5p coins.

The 50p coin was made new for the decimalised currency - there was no direct equivalent in "old money", whose coins had been designed before inflation became an everyday phenomenon. Yet later, for no apparent reason, it too was shrunk slightly. The difference was small enough that it wasn't immediately obvious which one you were holding, unless you had an example of the other to compare against.

The "new" £1 coin is actually bigger than the "gold sovereign" it replaces. In fact it is the same diameter - 22mm - but is about twice as thick. A "gold sovereign" originally had an official value of £1 - then a large amount of money - but is today worth much more than £1 due to inflation. The modern £1 coin is not made of gold.

[crazylegs]

To be fair, some of the British coins are smaller than they used to be.

In addition to the listed examples post decimilalisation, 5p, 50p and (I think) 10p coins have all shrunk in the last 25 years.

[MannersMakethMan]

They've also changed the materials used to make some of the UK coins as they became more expensive, and this has had a (somewhat smaller) effect on size. If I remember rightly, pennies and two pence pieces made before a certain year are actually worth more melted down as scrap copper than they are in trade.

[persephone]

Well, the British coins may have changed but the coins we use in the US? They've been the same size for at least the last 50 or so years, probably longer. So no, the quarter is not getting smaller, even if some coins in the UK are.

[jerkface11]

Americans would throw a fit if the government started changing the sizes of coins. We'd probably start a revolution or something.

[Arcade Man D]

To be fair, some of the British coins are smaller than they used to be.

The "new penny" (ie. decimal penny) is smaller than the "old penny" (pre-decimal), even though the "new penny" is worth more (there were 240 old pence in the pound) and was originally made of the same metal.

The 10p and 5p coins were made the same size, shape and composition as the old two-shilling and one-shilling coins, because they were worth exactly the same amount - they were just stamped differently. But later, to make sure the old shilling coins were taken out of circulation, they shrunk the 10p and 5p coins.

The 50p coin was made new for the decimalised currency - there was no direct equivalent in "old money", whose coins had been designed before inflation became an everyday phenomenon. Yet later, for no apparent reason, it too was shrunk slightly. The difference was small enough that it wasn't immediately obvious which one you were holding, unless you had an example of the other to compare against.

The "new" £1 coin is actually bigger than the "gold sovereign" it replaces. In fact it is the same diameter - 22mm - but is about twice as thick. A "gold sovereign" originally had an official value of £1 - then a large amount of money - but is today worth much more than £1 due to inflation. The modern £1 coin is not made of gold.

I would *hate* to be a vending machine/coin-op machine operator in Britain. Very much.

[crazylegs]

I would *hate* to be a vending machine/coin-op machine operator in Britain. Very much.

This all happened quite some time ago, well in excess of 30 years past.

[Chromatix]

Decimalisation happened in the 1970s, and all of the pre-decimal coins are long gone from circulation. Some of the size changes were to help remove some of the old coins, which had the same value as some of the newer ones and were still valid.

The size changes in the decimal coins *were* a royal pain for vending machines. I remember seeing notices posted on them explaining that a particular machine took only the old or the new size of coin, not both, and life-size diagrams to show which was which. But now only the new, smaller coins are valid, so sanity (temporarily) reigns again.

I might still have a one-shilling coin somewhere. It's technically only worth 5p, but it's probably beginning to have collector's value now.

Incidentally, the Gold Sovereign was almost certainly never accepted by a vending machine. It stopped being worth £1 in real terms rather a long time ago, so anyone would be stupid to try. Being made of real 22kt gold, it is worth rather a lot even if it is half the thickness of a £1 coin.

[Pagan]

Americans would throw a fit if the government started changing the sizes of coins. We'd probably start a revolution or something.

"You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world"

[Dips]

I know that coins may have changed size in other places, but I assure you all that the US quarter, which is what the OP was about, has not changed size in decades.

There are two possibilities here:

1. She mistook the quarter for nickel. After she accused you of giving her a nickel, she thought it would make her look *less* foolish to pretend quarters had shrunk than admit her mistake.

2. She *really* thinks quarters have shrunk.

Either way, it's quite the WTF moment. Good job waiting until after she left to

[Bella_Vixen]

Now that the US nickel has 20,000,000 million (or 4) designs, people are forever getting them mixed up with quarters.



You'd think the size would tip them off...but that leads us back to the original story...

[Pagan]

Not to mention that quarters have the state designs on them and have rough edges as opposed to a nickels smooth edge....

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

That's the point where you take out a nickel and compare. But that would be smartass, I guess.

[wolfie]

Not to mention that quarters have the state designs on them and have rough edges as opposed to a nickels smooth edge....

Quarters have either state designs or an eagle on them. Also, like the dime, they're a "sandwich" of silver-coloured metal around a copper core, while the nickel is a one-layer coin.

The "sandwich"/one-layer and rough/smooth issues are related - the quarter and dime used to be made of silver, but back in the '60s the government's debasement of the currency (seen by the consumer as inflation) resulted in them being worth more melted down than as coins. The "sandwich" design was to give them the same weight as the silver ones so they'd still work in vending machines, and the rough (known as "milled") edge dates back to the silver days, making it obvious if someone "clipped" (filed off a bit, to later melt down as silver) their coins. The nickel has always been made of (surprise) nickel, which is a base (not precious) metal. This made it not worth "clipping", so there was no need for the milled edge.

"Clipping" has made its way into literature. In The Three Musketeers, a couple of the heroes were having trouble with an inkeeper because the bad guy had identified them as coiners - counterfeiters making their own coins with less than the face value of precious metal, either by being smaller or by alloying (with the metal traditionally having been obtained by clipping other coins). In Robin Hood and the Widow's Three Sons, the "twenty pieces of good broad gold" referred to coins which had not been clipped (still full size).