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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 38006, member: 112&quot;]Ever since man issued the first coin there have been counterfeit coins. The primary reason for this is obvious - money. If you could make your own coins out of a material of lesser value and yet spend them in the marketplace as genuine coins - you were ahead of the game. But there were also other reasons for counterfeiting coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>In ancient times and all the way up until the modern age - it wasn&#039;t the criminal element who counterfeited coins - it was governments. For criminals did not have gold &amp; silver - they were far too poor. The only people with gold &amp; silver were the kings and nobility. You see, coins were not always as readily available as they are today. In fact they were downright scarce in most of the world until the 20th century. But coins are what permitted commerce to take place - for goods and services to be traded not only among individuals, but among nations. It was never an army that made a nation strong &amp; powerful - it was trade ! So coins were a very necessary item - not the money they represented, but the coins themselves.</p><p><br /></p><p>You also have to have an understanding of how it used to be with coins before the modern age. It was an individual, one man, a king who decided how his coins were made. He decided the metal to be used and he decided the fineness of that metal. And he could change it at will. For example, say that times are good and all is well within the kingdom. The king issues coins made of silver, or gold - and the metal is of a high degree of purity, usually approaching 95% or higher. Everybody in the kingdom is happy, there is plenty to go around and they have the benefit of &quot;sound money&quot;. </p><p><br /></p><p>But one day the king becomes angry with a neighboring king and declares war on him. But wars cost money and the king has to pay for it somehow. So he decides that the easiest way is to debase the purity of his coinage. So he calls in all the coins he has issued and designs a new coin. And instead of issuing coins of 95% purity - he changes it 90% and uses the gold &amp; silver he has left over to pay for his war. This scenario took place time and time again - it still happens today.</p><p><br /></p><p>But the second king, he has a way he can get back at his enemy. For coins don&#039;t just stay in the local kingdom - they circulate due to trade. So the 2nd king, he copies the coins of his enemy, only he makes them of an even lesser fineness and sends them out to circulate. Now the first king doesn&#039;t know this and soon the &quot;bad money&quot; is well mixed in his kingdom. It is given to his friends and other neighboring kingdoms due to trade. But they soon discover this is &quot;bad money&quot; - and now the king has enemies all around. No one will trade with him for his money is no good.</p><p><br /></p><p>So in effect, what happened was the first king&#039;s money was counterfeited which resulted in no one wanting to accept his coinage any longer. At least not at the rates they used to accept it when he had sound money. So that one silver coin that used to buy a bushel of grain - now only bought a half bushel. So the money of a nation could not only be ruined by the king himself - it could also be ruined by his neighbors. And if you ruined the money - you ruined the nation. </p><p><br /></p><p>But the copied coins were not always made so well. Sometimes they &quot;looked&quot; like the real thing, as long as you didn&#039;t look too close. Sometimes they were identical. And sometimes the changes were very minor, the design was off, just a bit. And often nobody would notice for years - if ever.</p><p><br /></p><p>This practice was extremely common, everybody did it. The kings did it, the Popes did it, the Bishops did it, the Dukes - everybody !! Let one nation develop a coinage that was well accepted and trusted to be sound money - and soon others would copy that coinage and issue it themselves. For coinage that people trusted, had faith in - was a rare commodity.</p><p><br /></p><p>And there were all sorts of ways they could do it. They could issue debased coins, they could take original, sound money, coins and shave off small bits. Then they would strike the coins again with the same design making them look like original coins - only slightly lighter in weight. Kings even did it to their own coins when they needed to raise money for a war or to build a new palace. They would gather the old coins, take a bit off, strike them over - and issue them with the same or even a higher value. Nice work if you can get it&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie8" alt=":D" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /> </p><p><br /></p><p>But call them copies, call them fakes - call them anything you like - they were counterfeit coins. This didn&#039;t always happen - but it happened a lot !![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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