Just about every collector knows about the short-lived U.S. 20-cent piece and its problems with being too close in size to the quarter dollar, causing confusion and leading to its quick demise. But there were other, less familiar examples of this type of coin confusion. Some of these were detailed by Ray Young in the December 1964 issue of Coins magazine. “Modern numismatists, accustomed to the present handy U.S. coin denominations, look on the old 3-cent piece and other uncurrent series with some nostalgia,” Young wrote. “But it’s likely that Americans seventy or eighty years ago had other opinions. Bluntly speaking, most of the discontinued values were nuisances that few people were sorry to see disappear.
“The three-cent nickel was probably the worst of the lot. It originated in 1865 when Congress authorized it for redeeming three-cent fractional currency notes (shinplasters). The Treasury may have saved money on the coin, since for all