What are the coins and banknotes with unusual denominations?

Question

Some coins and banknotes have unusual denominations. For example, there are coins of 4 doubles and 8 doubles in Guernesey, coins of 4 taris in Sicilia, 6 roubles, 15 kopecks, there are banknotes of 3 roubles. These values (4, 6, 8 and 15) are not common for coins and 3 is not common for a banknote. Do you know other coins and notes with odd denominations?

Answer 1

As BD in NM wrote the U.S. has had some strange denominations. He did not mention the 2 1/2, 3 and 4 dollar gold coins. One thing about other countries what may seem an odd figure to us is not to the people living there. Back in the days of state sanctioned banks, the ones before the Civil war, $3, $4 and $7 bills were not uncommon. The big thing today is coins from countries that don't exist. They are selling coins from Atlantis and the like. There is even paper money from the Antarctic. See if a library near you has the Krause/Mishler Standard Catalogs of world coins. The 1601-1700, 1701-1800 and the 1801-1900 volumes are a great place to find the odd denominations. They used to take the Spanish colonial coins and divide them up in to 8 parts and each part was worth 12 1/2 cents American. That is also how the coin became known as a pieces of 8. Coinage is an interesting thing to study for you can learn a lot about a country and what happened at certain times. The U.S. 3 cent piece showed up, because sending a letter went up to 3 cents. Most odd denomination money was made for a reason, some practical and many not.

Answer 2

The US had a 1/2 cent, 2 cent, two types of 3 cent pieces and a 20 cent piece back in the 1800's. We currently have a $2.00 bill, not different for Europeans but a little different for the US.

Spanish milled dollars were cut into parts in our colonial period. Hence the saying "Two bits, four bits, six bits a dollar."

Continental currency, issued by the Continental Congress during our revolution, was in odd denominations such as 1/3, 3, 7, 60 and 80 dollars. The higher dollar amounts were a result of inflationary pressures because we had paper currency not back by any silver or gold reserves.

Answer 3

BTW, the largest denomination U.S. bill is the $100,000 with the portrait of Salmon Chase on it. It is used for transactions between Federal Reserve Banks although with the internet, this need may be unnecessary. The $500 & $1000 bills were withdrawn so as to make drug money movement more difficult as the use of $100 bills makes the druggies ship 5x to 10x as many bills.

Answer 4

In the Netherlands, they used to have a banknote for 25 gilder instead of 20, as most countries do. I think they've gone to Euros now, though.

Answer 5

Yugoslavia had a 500,000,000,000 dinara note in the 1990's. Bosnia also had large bills - 10,000,000,000, 5,000,000,000...compared to the US's largest bill - $10,000.