Template talk:US currency and coinage

Penny vs. Cent
Any objections to changing the word "Penny" to "Cent"?? It makes the template look somewhat less British. The word "penny" is officially a British word; the official name of the U.S. coin is "cent". "Penny" is just a nickname; the official U.S. government does not use it. I want at least 10 registered Wikipedians to respond within the next week. 66.245.8.15 01:22, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Already done 17:54, 30 May 2005 by Georgia guy --Kurthalomieu J. McCool 06:54, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * "Nickel" is also a nickname. Should it be changed to "Five Cent Coin" or something like that? thirty-seven 23:56, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes it should. Firstly because it is just a nickname, secondly because the word "nickel" has been slang (at various points in history) for other denominations of coins.  Changing now. - O^O 18:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * "Nickel" is official terminology used by the United States Mint. See, among others.--chris.lawson 01:16, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, if "nickel" is on official website, and numeric value is also given, then I give. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 02:27, 28 January 2007 (UTC)


 * "Nickel" is not the official name for the five-cent coin. I agree that the US Mint website uses the term here and there (as your example shows), but they also use the term "Penny" in places, and that isn't the official name of a coin either.  The names of these coins have all been defined by Congress in 31 USC 5112 .  Quoting the part under discussion here:


 * (5) a 5-cent coin that is 0.835 inch in diameter and weighs 5 grams.


 * Additionally, all US coins have their names printed right on them. A dime is a "dime", a quarter dollar is a "quarter dollar" and five cents is "five cents". - O^O 03:47, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * WP:CN shoots a pretty big hole in this argument, though, regardless of what Congress says. Also, the Mint is *very* consistent in their use of "nickel" to refer to five-cent coins other than half-dimes; they are far less enthusiastic in their use of "penny" and, in fact, are fairly consistent in their official reference to the coin as a "one-cent coin".--chris.lawson 05:04, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Are you referring to Common_knowledge? If anything, that supports that we should report the fact (five-cent coin) and not the conventional wisdom (nickel).  Did I misunderstand you? - O^O 15:25, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I rvd back to "Nickel (5¢) · Dime (10¢)". Whether or not the nicknames are official, the numeric values are essential for navigation by non-American readers. –EdC 09:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi EdC, I don't agree to the use of "Nickel" and "Penny", but more on that later. I did notice in my edit yesterday that "5¢" and "10¢", and I did overwrite them, but part of that was the lack of consistency.  If we want to provide numeric values, why not "25¢" for quarter dollar (and so on).  I'll be back later with some more data on "five cent" vs "nickel", but "nickel" is not going to stand. - O^O 15:25, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, consistency can be taken too far. I doubt many readers will have trouble working out that a quarter of a decimal-denominated currency is 25 of the smaller unit, whereas "nickel" and "dime" are meaningless to non-US readers. –EdC 16:45, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

When this discussion is over, please think about applying to Template:Canadian currency and coinage and Template:AUD. Consistency is important. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 18:47, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Silver Certificates
Why are United States notes included, but not silver certificates? --Seitz 05:39, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

United States Notes are still currently an official currency of the U.S., silver certificates are not. --Kurthalomieu J. McCool 06:54, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Silver certificates are still legal tender and do still circulate at their face value."  --09:01, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

ALL U.S. currency is still legal tender at its face value, and silver certificate do not "circulate". However, there may be fluke instances of someone spending one. --Kurt 00:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

currency/coinage/banknotes
I don't think it's appropriate to use currency to mean only banknotes, since coins are currency also. I propose changing the title to "United States currency", changing the heading which is now "currency" to "banknotes" (or "paper money", but the categories use banknotes), and changing the other heading from "coinage" to "coins" (unless someone can explain to me why coinage is more appropriate -- it sounds wrong to me because we're not talking about coinage in general, but specific coins, but I also think the word "coinage" generally sounds pretentious, so maybe I'm biased). Any objections to the changes? Ingrid 17:31, 10 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Here's my two & half cents on this issue. Regarding the word "currency", it is used with a connotation of meaning "paper money" in the U.S. and especially with U.S. paper money collectors.  For instance, there is a new book that was just released entitled 100 Greatest American Currency Notes.  However, this book title does carry the word "note", but in it describes the first greatest note as the "Holy Grail for collectors of federal currency".  There is also the case of the book Standard Catalogue of United States Currency which lists paper money of the U.S;  Currency may have been used because it also contains tokens with encased postage stamps, but this certainly is not the same things as a coins.  I'm aware that the technical definition of currency includes not only paper money but coins as well, but I honestly think it should be left.


 * The word "banknote" not being common (which I think I also read on an article on here) in American lexicon is no coincidence. The last actual "banknotes" that were issued through the U.S. gov't. were the National Bank Notes of Series 1929.  Although the Federal Reserve is a bank, it is not necessarily the money creating/issuing authority, but rather it is more of a money purchasing/distributing authority; this is basically what constitutes a Federal Reserve Note.  The Federal Reserve Banks themselves did issue notes themselves, Federal Reserve Bank Notes, but this was also last done in the Series of 1929.  Therefore, "banknote" is not really an appropriate term here.


 * As far as changing coinage to coins I don't have any real objections against it, but I also don't feel it is overly pretentious considering there is a United States coinage article. I guess I'm pretty neutral on this issue.  --Kurt 21:26, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I see your points. I realize that "banknote" is not widely used in the US, but I hadn't realized that "currency" was used among collectors. Perhaps we could use "paper money"? I would really like to find an alternative to "currency", since using it implies that coins are not currency, but I guess I can live with it. Personally, as an American and a world coin collector, I was surprised when I found out that coins were currency. And on a related note, it sounds like the categories need to be changed from banknotes to "paper money". Ingrid 02:55, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Template formatting
Clearly I was WP:BOLD with the formatting changes I made to the template, so I wanted to leave a note here as a common spot for feedback/discussion. Thx. &mdash; MrDolomite | Talk 20:02, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Glad to see you being bold! However, there were some problems with the text you changed from bold to italic. Although bold text is used to indicate the current page of a template, it is also used for template heading titles along with the vertically stacked subheading titles. I do think it was a good idea to change "United States currency [and coinage]" to simply currency and coinage.  I'm not sure what the Wikipedia policy of using abreviations in templates is, though. --Kurt 04:27, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Obsolete Link In Template
The last link, text "Obsolete denominations", links to Template:Obsolete_U.S._currency_and_coinage. In a brief search, I couldn't actually find an article on obsolete denominations - perhaps there should be one - but it doesn't seem useful to have a template linked to in place of an article. As I'm not aware of an appropriate article, am not about to create one, and don't know what an appropriate replacement link would be, I'll leave that to someone who is aware/will create one/does know one. :) - Somnior 21:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Current coinage
I removed the link to the $50 American Gold Buffalo, and the link that said it was to a $10 coin, but actually linked to the First Spouse dollars. As of now it has all coins minted for actual circulation. If this list is to include every denomination of bullion minted, it would have to include the $5, $10, $25, and $50 Gold Eagles, the $50 Gold Buffalo, the $10, $25, $50, and $100 Platinum Eagles, and possibly more that I have forgotten. Harksaw (talk) 19:24, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Add Bullion coins?
I propose that we add a line for Bullion coins since they are "coinage" as in the title of this template. It would look something like this:

If no objections, I'll go ahead with it. —Diiscool (talk) 00:51, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Color change
A few weeks ago, Purplebackpack89 changed the color of this template (see the old version here. I liked the idea but not necessarily the outcome. Then, 80.163.68.22 changed the template back to the way it was, standard colors.

I have tweaked the color changing idea a little bit and added the US flag. I would be interested in any comments or ideas people have about this.

Thanks —Diiscool (talk) 23:56, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I changed foreground color to black as green on green is difficult to read and makes links harder notice. &mdash; MrDolomite &bull; Talk 18:25, 29 April 2010 (UTC)