Were US half cents ever called halfpennies? (Answer: No, they weren't) [解決]

Hello,

Was browsing Ebay for an affordable US half cent today (mission unsuccessful, by the way) when this thought occurred to me, so I thought I'd ask the community; if US cent coins are commonly called "pennies", then was the half cent ever referred to as a halfpenny in common American parlance?

I tried Googling it but all the relevant results were about British halfpennies instead, so thought someone here might know.

I've only ever heard half cent.

I don't think so. Furthermore I think the word "cent" was used more in the young United States than it is today, and English coinage still circulated well into the 19th century.
A clue from period literature - In The House of Seven Gables, first published in 1851, Miss Hepzibah Pynchon opens a "cent shop" . Her uncle gives her some advice including "Never take paper-money! Look well to your change! Ring the silver on the four-pound weight! Shove back all English half-pence and base copper tokens, such as are very plenty about town!"

I would guess that it has always been cents and not pence. When the Americans won independence in 1776 they wanted to distance themselves from England. Webster is their dictionary not Oxford. They changed the spelling of words like colour to color. Zed became Zee.
The decimal system was much easier to use than pound/shillings.

I have never seen a reference to half cents as halfpennies. (Among other reasons, it could be that the half cents maintained a fair weight during their entire run from 1793-1857, whereas halfpennies were often lightweight and/or counterfeit, causing a major financial problem in the late 1700s.)

It should also be noted that there are only a few years when a significant quantity of half cents were struck. For the Braided Hair Half Cents (minted 1849-1857), someone could have purchased ALL of the business strikes for less than $2,723! Of the eight dates, there are three (1849, 1850 and 1857) which are ranked as Rarity 2--less than 1,250 known.

If you want a challenge, put together a date set of the eight Braided Hair Half Cent business strikes. It can be done (I completed three sets, but it took a while!)

You will rarely find a Braided Hair Half Cent that grades below VF; they simply did not circulate for that long. Mintage ceased in 1857, and many were recalled and remelted by the Mint.

Thanks everyone who replied, I thought it would be amusing if such a British (and formerly Commonwealth) term was ever used in the US.

I assumed the cent being called the penny was a remnant of British colonial rule, but it seems like the penny nickname came about later from what Mr.Midnight says. The bit about the English halfpennies reminds me of this article I once read about how Spanish colonial reales and "bits" continued to circulate in parts of the USA until as late as the 1850s.

As for my half cent quest, I have never seen one under 40 euro, both on Ebay or in real life coin dealers'. I don't really mind which type or in what condition, but the Braided Hair design is my personal favourite on 19th century US coins.

引用する: "CassTaylor"​The bit about the English halfpennies reminds me of this article I once read about how Spanish colonial reales and "bits" continued to circulate in parts of the USA until as late as the 1850s.

​Spanish colonial silver, and many other foreign coins (including Brazilian silver coins on which you could identify that they were struck onto Spanish colonial silver) remained legal tender in the United States until 1857. In that year, the copper half cents and large cents were ended, and many were redeemed and remelted.

To redeem the copper coins, the new smaller and copper-nickel "Flying Eagle" cents were used. To redeem the foreign silver, Three Cents Silver coins were used (the first U. S. silver type to intentionally contain less than its full value in precious metal).

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces14014.html

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces4727.html

That's all very interesting. Sometimes one can also use Google nGram to search for two or more terms in all of Google books:



In this case, i.e. "halfpenny" vs. "half cent", the results are not very useful, but one can click at the links at the bottom to search in books of any given period.

引用する: "CassTaylor"​As for my half cent quest, I have never seen one under 40 euro, both on Ebay or in real life coin dealers'. I don't really mind which type or in what condition, but the Braided Hair design is my personal favourite on 19th century US coins.

​They do exist, but you may have to stretch your budget a bit for a nice Braided Hair.  :)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/372532599822