The World’s Smallest Coin?

1836 1 1/2 british pence

Say hello to my new little friend! A 1 and 1/2 Pence piece from Great Britain, circa 1836! And, quite frankly, the tiniest coin I’ve ever seen before… Look how cute she is! (Yes, she’s a “she” :))

I picked it up for $27 worth of trade (it’s worth about $33 in “VF” grade), and I haven’t been able to stop playing with it since. I’m on a mission to find a coin that’s smaller from my collection but so far I’ve failed miserably.

Here’s the coin compared to our U.S. change:

1 1/2 pence compared to penny

1 1/2 pence compared to dime

1 1/2 pence compared to quarter

I didn’t have any spare change laying around, so I plucked some of these guys from my “renegades” bowl I’ve collected over the years… The coins that aren’t worth anything more than face value, but that have weird things going on like paint on them, crazy mutilations, edges that are way thicker than others, etc. I can’t seem to put them back into circulation! :)

Anyways, as you can tell this coin is teeny tiny. And what an interesting denomination too! 1 and 1/2??? It would be interesting to see how much that would be worth in today’s dollars if it were around… Maybe it was like a 50 cent piece? The thing’s almost 200 years old! Pretty incredible you can still see most of the markings pretty well too.

Here’s some details on this 1 and 1/2 Pence  from NGC:

  • Composition: Silver
  • Weight: 0.7069g
  • ASW: 0.0210 oz (2% of an ounce of silver – hah!)
  • Melt Value: $0.40 ( as of 6/7/2014)
  • Guy on the front: William IV

Anyone else add any interesting coins to their collection lately?

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