Canadian coins

Canadian coinage is the coinage of Canada, produced by the Royal Canadian Mint and denominated in Canadian dollars ($) and the subunit of dollars, cents (¢).

There are six denominations of Canadian circulation coinage in production: 5¢, 10¢, 25¢, 50¢, $1, and $2. Officially they are each named according to their value (e.g. "ten-cent piece"), but in practice only the fifty-cent piece is known by that name. The three smallest coins are invariably known as the nickel (5¢), the dime (10¢), and the quarter (25¢), and the one-dollar and two-dollar coins are usually called the loonie and the toonie respectively. The production of the Canadian one-cent piece (known as the penny) was discontinued in 2012, as inflation had reduced its value significantly below the cost of production.

The 50¢ piece, though in circulation, is far less circulated than the other coins. Between the years 2000 and 2007 the Royal Canadian Mint struck 15,950,000 50¢ pieces; in comparison, during the same period 2,262,165,000 quarters were released (approximately 142 times as many). This coin is sometimes called a half-dollar, but the name 50¢ piece is also used.

Other than the $2 coin, the denominations of Canadian coinage correspond to those of United States coinage. The sizes of the coins less than 50¢ are similar to those of U.S. coins, though this was not always the case. While the coins tend to have diameters almost equal to the equivalent U.S. coinage, most of the coins are thinner and weigh less than the equivalent U.S. coinage. The U.S. penny settled on its current size in 1857, whereas the Canadian penny was much larger (25.4 mm (1.00 in)) until 1920. There was some correspondence between the size of Canadian coins and British coins of similar value. For example, the large Canadian penny was identical in size and value to the contemporary British half-penny, which was 25.4 mm (1.00 in) in the Edward VII version, and slightly larger during Victoria's reign. Likewise, the Canadian quarter (23.81 mm diameter) was virtually identical in size and value to the British shilling (worth 12 British pence or about 24 Canadian cents, with a 24-millimetre (¹⁵⁄₁₆ in) diameter). The Canadian 5¢ coins, until the larger nickel coins of 1922, were 15 mm silver coins quite different from the U.S. "Liberty head" nickels of 1883–1913, which were 21.2 mm and copper-nickel alloy, but more like the older U.S. half dimes.

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