So some of you may be wondering why is the Nickel so much larger than the dime? I for one am normally strange and have thought this. Well, turns out that back in the day (1793) the US currency was based off of the silver dollar purity. And subsuquently, small currency was a percentage of the purity of the silver dollar. So the dime, which was mentioned last month, is 1/10th purity. The nickel was, therefore, 1/20th, or 5 percent silver.

The problem was that the original nickel was too small for common handling and became annoying thus becoming easily lost. So in 1866, the US Mint decided to change the size of the nickel and it became larger. My only question now is, how come the US Mint hasn’t decreased the size of the penny so we can all forgot about those annoying coins! Perhaps I step up on my soap box again and complain about the penny. Until then, keep counting your change.