A History question: When did a coin's value become more than...

dizzyfoxx

...its' face value for the first time in history?

coinkat

I am guessing and I will say 1857

TomB

Are you writing about US coinage or any coinage? If US coinage then 1799 cents and 1796 and 1797 half dollars were worth more than face value very early on.

cladking

Coin collecting goes back nearly as far as coins more than 2,500 years ago. Back when all coins
were still modern someone noticed one was hard to find and paid more for it. After that it be-
came increasingly common since classics were invented.

There weren't any market makers in the old days so some didn't take any of it seriously.

It wasn't long until the emperor was debasing the coinage and all the coins were worth more than
face value.