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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 1633463, member: 19463&quot;]While I certainly agree that the subject needs a lot more study, I am not so restrictive on the term Limes (pronounce it leem-ace rather than like the fruit).&nbsp; I don&#039;t recall seeing many of these coins until the &#039;opening&#039; of trade with the former Soviet bloc countries.&nbsp; That alone suggests that the borderlands that spawned these coins was not the Rhine that produced copy bronzes (the asses I have heard called &#039;Cast in Gaul&#039; - who first applied the name Limes falsa to them?).&nbsp; While you hear ideas and theories without evidence to support regarding the &#039;why&#039; they exist, I&#039;d first look for their origin farther east that the Rhine.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>The problem with any study of unofficial coins is that you must not assume that anything you discover for one group of coins applies to all coins.&nbsp; It is more than likely that there were quite a number of shops producing coins other than the official mints.&nbsp; Even if you could prove beyond doubt that one group of coins was a semi-official municipal issue or connected in some way to Roman garrisons on the borders (Limes), you would know absolutely nothing about other coins.&nbsp; Some appear to be cast, some made from copy dies and some &#039;original&#039; engravings.&nbsp; There are fully copper, silver washed, foil fourree and base silver coins as well as a few that are made in as good silver as we see from the official mints.&nbsp; All these have in common is what they are not - not what they are.&nbsp; Conventional scholars ignore these coins simply because they believe that it is meaningless to study them.&nbsp;&nbsp; While I regret this attitude, I am not sure I believe that there ever will be a good understanding of the subject and words like &#039;hopeless&#039; seem reasonable to use.&nbsp; There was a time, for example, that modern scholars could not read Egyptian hieroglyphics but someone found the Rosetta Stone which opened the door to the language.&nbsp; Whether there is a document, inscription, mint site for excavation or something else that will serve as a Rosetta Stone for Limes denarii is something we can only hope for but not something which I would bet we will ever see.&nbsp; Meanwhile we each decide whether we want to collect them, own a couple samples or ignore them as meaningless trash.&nbsp; I have a few.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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