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Message:: [QUOTE="Tejas, post: 4388374, member: 84905"]These denarius imitiations are usually very worn and they are often found as parts of hoards together with official Roman coins. It looks like these coins were used in bulk payments, i.e. payments were coins passed in bags according to size or weight. The findspot Kursk is interesting and an important reason why these coins are often (in my view wrongly) attributed to Sarmatians rather than Goths. Hence, these coins often turn up in eastern Ukraine and Russia, i.e. regions outside Gothic settlement areas. However, this does not have to mean that they were produced there. For example, many medieval German coins (10./11. Cent.) turn up in Poland. So my theory is this: The coins were produced by people that had contact with the Roman Empire and Roman coins - I think predominately the Goths (rather than Sarmatians). They needed these imitations to supplement payments to people further to the east, who had little or no contact with the Roman world. I guess that these coins were not used for small payments, but for bulk payments to purchase certain valuable commodities in the east and in economic terms they represent "balance of payment imbalances". On these ethnic attributions: When we talk about Goths, we use a term that may have meant very little or nothing to the actual people at the time, who probably referred to themselves by such names as Greuthungi, Tervingi, Vesi, Tailfali etc.[/QUOTE]