#1-Countries Coins Hundredths

Countries with money that doesn’t break into hundredths.

If you already read Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything, you know that a very special coin is an important part of the story. While I was writing about coins, I wondered whether any country breaks its money into anything other than 100 pieces?

So I wrote:

The word “cent” is almost the same as the word “century” (one hundred years, duh!) and means that there are one hundred of them in every dollar. I don’t know where the word “penny” comes from—and neither does anyone else. I looked it up. But there are pennies in England, and I’m guessing that there are one hundred of them to the pound or euro or whatever the people in England use for money. I wonder if every country uses money that breaks into one hundred smaller pieces. If you know of a country that doesn’t, please go to my website. I’m making a list.

Canadian_Penny_ReverseHere’s what I found out. In North America, money is split into hundredths:

1 dollar (USA) = 100 cents

1 dollar (Canadian) = 100 cents

1 peso (Mexican) = 100 centavos

The Canadian dollar and the US dollar are worth almost the same amount, so American and Canadian pennies (which is what people in both countries usually call their one-cent coins) are just about equal in value. The Mexican peso, however, is worth only about eight cents (or at least it was when I wrote this), so:

1.   It takes 12 or 13 centavos to be equal to just about one cent (US or Canadian).

mex5c199812.   And because one centavo is worth so little, the smallest Mexican coin is five centavos, which is equal to less than one cent! In fact, even the five- and ten-centavo coins are rarely used. I have heard that the 50-centavo coin is the smallest in regular circulation.

3.   Therefore, even though Mexico breaks its peso into 100 centavos, there’s really no such thing as one centavo.

So, Mexico sort of does count.

If you know of a country that does not break its currency into hundredths, please let me know by commenting below.

Comments from my Readers & Friends

    • Cheesie’s book would’ve been totally boring without me in it.

  1. Hmmm Hmmm Hmmm Hmmm Hmmm Hmmm 🧐 HOW DO U MAK LINK AN NOT CAINLINK ⛓⛓⛓⛓⛓⛓⛓⛓⛓⛓⛓⛓⛓!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  2. hey,cheesie, I’m a nusimasist and I don’t have any currencys that split up into hundreths, except chinese yuan.

    • Here’s what it says in Wikipedia:
      “One yuan is divided into 10 jiao. One jiao is divided into 10 fen.”
      That means there are 100 fen in each yuan.

    • Nope. I just looked it up and it says “The shekel is divided into 100 agora.” And one shekel is worth about 29 cents, which means a 10 agorot (plural) coin is worth about 3 US cents.

  3. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region 香港特别行政區 (a.k.a. Hong Kong, 香港, and HK):

    In Chinese, the smallest coin available is 一毫, which is 1/10 of a dollar 一元. In the past HK used to have 一仙, which is 1/100 of a dollar 一元, but that was only when the value of money was greater.

    Another point to note, that is in English, they still call it 10 cents/1 cent.

    Therefore, HK transformed from a region (NOT COUNTRY) with money that breaks into hundredths into a region with money that doesn’t break into hundredths.

  4. A Rwandan dollar is not 100 cents it is actually 70 cents to a us dollar, nice books cheese and keep writing them! 😉

    • Huh? I looked it up online, and I found that Rwanda has francs, not dollars. And their franc is divided into 100 centimes.

  5. Everyone: TCK means Third Culture Kid. I live somewhere where both my parent’s passport aren’t from. P.S Peso is used in Mexico and the Philippines.

  6. I’m american/korean and I still don’t get their money!I wish all countrys’ money was the same as ours. (even if they can turn out interesting.)

    • My aunt lives in Australia. Their money is much more beautiful than ours. And the bills get slightly bigger the more they are worth. I think that’s so blind people can tell what bills they are holding.

    • Sydney, I am familiar with WON becuz I am in Kor.South. There’s 1000 WON which is basically like a dollar. And then there is 10000 WON which is…a lot of money.

  7. Singapore used to but stopped now. Now, the smallest amt per coin is $0.05!

    • Kind of right.
      I looked on Wikipedia and it said Singapore had “6.71 million 1 cent coins…in circulation as of 1 December 2011, but [they] are no longer issued since 2003.” So really, the Singapore dollar is still sort of divided into 100 cents.