On Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:41:19 +0100, wrote:


"Charles Ellson" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:11:27 +0100, "Peter Masson"
wrote:

That might be down to interpretation. The last intentionally-regular
issues for general circulation seem to have been after the 1887 Royal
Jubilee. Since then have been mostly commemorative issues but even
before Victoria's time they don't seem to have been established as an
"everyday" issue. I suspect their size possibly clashed with some kind
of practical threshold above which coins were inconvenient to carry or
handle.

Was the size of coins really an issue, though?

Think also in terms of "Is that the smallest you've got?". For the
ordinary person they possibly had the same inconvenience as a 50 or
100 pound note now has for everyday use.

How were people in the United States handling the 20-dollar coins, or even
the Liberty silver dollars?

The Eisenhower dollars of the 1970s were also quite big, and I believe that
they were in general circulation.