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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GinoLR, post: 24798566, member: 128351&quot;]It happened in Europe too, in the same period.</p><p><br /></p><p>Cash coins were bronze coins of little value (see how many are needed to pay for a meal). There is no big difference between a cash coin cast in 175 BC and another one cast c. 1900 AD. All kinds of cash coins circulated as long as people accepted them and if somebody found in the ground a coin dating back to the Han dynasties, he just could put it in circulation again. </p><p><br /></p><p>Same thing in France c. 1900. In an old wallet that belonged to my great-grandfather I found small change. Copper coins of 1, 2, 5, 10 centimes minted under Napoleon III and the Republic in the late 19th - early 20th c. There was also a copper nummus of Constantine the Great minted in the early 320s. These old Roman coins had always been accepted as small change in rural areas as late as the early 1900s. A nummus of Constantine could be considered a 2 centimes coin, it was copper and had roughly the same size. </p><p><br /></p><p>Here it is:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1586697[/ATTACH] Constantine the Great, AE nummus, Rome 321.</p><p>Obv.: CONSTAN-TINVS AVG, laureate head right</p><p>Rev.: D N CONSTANTINI MAX AVG, VOT / XX in two lines within wreath; RP in exergue.</p><p>RIC 232.</p><p>Minted at Rome in 321, circulated in the western Roman Empire in the 4th c., probably lost in Gaul in the 4th c., found and recovered in the modern period (17th, 18th, 19th c. ?) and returned to circulation, still circulating in France c. 1910.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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