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Message:: [QUOTE="Finn235, post: 3590701, member: 98035"]I'll need to find it, but I read on a blog of a collector in India that Gadhaiya coins are such a common sight in rural marketplaces that many merchants will trade the goods directly for the coins, which they sell to coin dealers on their next trip to the city. In his example, a farmer found a coin in his field and used it to buy a couple pounds of bananas. Can't use them to pay the tax man, nor deposit into your bank account, but in my eyes that meets the criteria of a coin circulating. The distinction, I think, is the society's fixation on what is or isn't "legal tender". Up until the late 19th century, you could dig up a slick sestertius and probably convince someone to let you use it as a cartwheel 2p coin, or a denarius as a sixpence. I don't think there's a coin that was ever made that could withstand much more than 100-150 years of continual use, so whatever "out of place" coins were likely dug and then spent. One of the more crazy over strikes I've seen was offered by Leu a few auctions ago - an Eastern mint Constantine SOL IN VICTO COMITI follis that was re-struck into a Standing Caliph fals more than 300 years later.[/QUOTE]