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Message:: [QUOTE="dougsmit, post: 2148815, member: 19463"]As I was typing, Ardatirion said it all and better.  One thing to add, however, is that few of us are prepared to realize just how many of these things were made and how many huge hoards have been found over the last few hundred years.  There are stories of a rain washing out a soil bank that gushed coins.  In earlier days, most of these were melted down but now we sort them out and only trash and things found illegally that need to be 'sanitized' would be melted.  I am told there are types of coins that all known specimens come from one find.  Relatively few finds in the past 500 years have been recorded but volume V of the British Museum Catalog Roman Empire (page xlviii) caught my eye with a listing: "At Mazrieux, near Lyons, five thousand denarii, all of Clodius Albinus."  This has all the signs of a mint sack that never made it to paying the soldiers for whom it was destined. How many of our current supply of Clodius Albinus as Augustus were in that find?"  How many other minty fresh bags remain out there?  We will never know when the last coin is found.  Most recorded finds are mixed up piggy banks with a few to 80,000 (Reka Devnia Hoard) coins covering a span of years rather than all one type.  How many mint sacks of aurei of Pescennius Niger were buried in 195 AD only to be found in 1695 AD and recycled into modern coins.  That, I do not want to know![/QUOTE]