"There have been lots of names for British coins in times past, such as
tanner for the old sixpence,
bob for a shilling; for the half-crown coin (two shillings and sixpence) there were
tosheroon or half a dollar. In the 1870s, the old crown coin, five shillings, was at times called an
Oxford, which is rhyming slang (Oxford scholar = dollar).
"Another term of long-standing was
joey, originally a name given by cabbies to the silver Britannia groat, or fourpenny piece, which was issued in 1836, largely at the insistence of Joseph Hume, the economist and Member of Parliament, who said it would be useful for paying short cab fares and the like, but which stopped being issued in 1855, after which the name was transferred to the then silver threepenny piece instead.
"Such names for smaller sums of British money have obviously fallen out of use since the decimalisation of the currency in 1971, which rendered most of the old coins obsolete, and have not yet been replaced with new ones.
"The only one which achieved popularity was
Maggie in the eighties, of the then new gold-coloured one-pound coin, because, it was said, 'it's brassy, two-faced and thinks it's a sovereign' (the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, had a noticeable tendency to mimic some of the more regal characteristics of Her Majesty).
"Perhaps the nearest equivalent outside Britain is the Canadian one-dollar coin, universally called a
loonie, ostensibly because of the bird pictured on one face, but more likely an expression of what people thought of the coin. (A Canadian wit claimed that as the Loonie had been such a success, the government was planning to bring out a two-dollar coin to be called a Doubloonie.)"
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The 1920s and 1930s were particularly rich in American slang terms for money, some of which are still in use today. Some terms referred to money's use in purchasing food:
bacon (as in bring home),
bread,
dough, and so on. (One term for counterfeit money was sourdough.) Other terms referred to the green colour of American bills:
cabbage, lettuce, kale, folding green, long green.
Rhino was a term first used in 1670. I suspect that jack derives from jackpot, originally referring to the large amounts of money you could win playing a jacks-or-better poker game. Some slang money terms I have no idea of the origin of:
mazuma, moolah, oscar, pap, plaster, rivets, scratch, spondulicks. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some monetary slang was invented by Damon Runyan or other writers of the time. [No, Runyan is not a misprint. Damon's father was Alfred Lee Runyan, a storyteller and itinerant printer and publisher of smalltown newspapers. At an early age Runyan followed his father into the newspaper business. At 15 he worked for the Pueblo (Colorado) Evening Press, where he soon became a fully fledged news reporter. When a typographical slip spelt his name Runyon he decided to keep it that way. He became one of the world's favorite short-story writers and humorists. On friendly terms with Al Capone, Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Arnold Rothstein and William Winchell, he gained fame with his tales of the gambling, racing and criminal worlds. One of his best-known works is Guys and Dolls (1932). Runyon's style relied on Broadway slang, outrageous metaphors, and constant use of the present tense. He died in 1946, aged 62.]
Other slang terms for a dollar include
ace, bean (as in bean counter),
boffo (abbreviation of box office, referring to money collected at theatres),
bone, buck, bullet, case note, clam, coconut, fish, frogskin, lizard, peso, rock, scrip, simoleon, and yellowback.
The heavy dollar coin was once known as an
iron man, plug, sinker, or wagon wheel.http://www.fun-with-words.com/money_words.html
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