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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 24304, member: 57463&quot;]Over in the &quot;Common Date&quot; thread Coinfreak said that he likes to imagine people getting paid with Double Eagles.&nbsp; I had to stop and think about that.&nbsp; I am not sure who would have been paid that way.&nbsp; The average wage then was about $1 per day, give or take.&nbsp; Even if as a clerk or manager you earned, say $1000 a year, that would be about $20 per week, but you would not get paid with one double eagle.&nbsp; You would get small bills and small change.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Double eagles did not circulate, which is why they are so easy to find in Extremely Fine to Mint State.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>We know that silver dollars were unpopular, except among Negroes and other poor in the South and among average people out West where silver was more popular for cultural reasons.&nbsp; Again, the fact that perhaps one-third of all Morgan Dollars are Uncirculated bears this out.</p><p><br /></p><p>I look to several reliable sources for history about trade and commerce.&nbsp; The most accessible are the local newspapers in America.&nbsp; Your hometown library probably has the hometown papers in archive, most likley on film.&nbsp; If you take the time to read the advertising, you get a good idea what money bought in different times and places.&nbsp; (Of course, ads are come-ons.&nbsp; You also want to look at farm produce prices, stories that mention prices or wages, etc., etc.)&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I live in the northern lower peninsula, and Upper Michigan has a history of mining here, so there are books based on original source materials that tell about wages, etc.</p><p><br /></p><p>When it comes to medieval or ancient history, the problem is one of filtering.&nbsp; You read Jenkins or Kraay or someone and you get their evaluations of the facts, rather than the facts themselves.&nbsp; I think it was W. W. Tarn who said in the middle of a paragraph about something else entirely that silver coins were worth more than their value in their home towns.&nbsp; Now how could that be?&nbsp; That statement is illogical.&nbsp; It is also not supported by evidence: no footnote to an ancient source, for instance.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, when you read about history, you have to really dig beneath the surface to get a good understanding of money and how it was used.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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