Money’s face value is its printed, stamped or written value situated on the currency or coin itself. It is the government that is assigning the denomination of the coin’s price as legal tender. Coins that don’t have legal tender are referred to as rounds and they don’t have face value.

As Easy as That

Finding out the face value of a coin is pretty obvious as it is printed on the front and back of the coin. To give you an example, if you’ll be looking at standard US penny, it reads “One Cent”, a nickel says “Five Cents” and so on. This is otherwise called the face value of the coin or its worth as currency form.

Everything is in Place until…

Paper currency on the other hand works in the same manner. The materials that are used in making a dollar bill are not worth anything.

But, the assigned face value to it makes all the difference. This wasn’t until the Great Depression hits when all of the US paper money was backed by gold. US applied direct convertibility of US dollar to gold was removed officially under the Nixon administration. However, advocates of Gold Standard are still pushing that we must return to using such system because gold carries intrinsic value and is a precious metal.