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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Heliodromus, post: 8119565, member: 120820&quot;]For gold coins the first step from the mint/government coffers must have usually been for goods and paid services rendered to the government. It&#039;d be interesting to know how much of that was soldiers pay/donatives vs private contractors.</p><p><br /></p><p>For bronze coins, some may have also gone directly for services. I&#039;ve read that in a roman army camp there was some kind of paymaster that would act as &quot;bank&quot; and give money to soldiers for everyday needs against their &quot;account&quot;. There may have been other government providers also paid in bronze for lesser amounts, especially if it was a contractor who would then be divvying it out to workers. The government liked to receive gold (sometimes demanding it for taxes), and pay out bronze, so they likely did this as much as they could.</p><p><br /></p><p>I believe there were also money changers, exchanging gold for bronze and vice versa, but not sure how they would enter the picture - obtaining coin directly from the government if supplies were imbalanced, perhaps, or maybe some of this was done by the government themselves (and would have provided an avenue for removing older coins from circulation).</p><p><br /></p><p>Wealthy merchants and landowners employing citizen labor likely paid them in bronze too, at least at certain points in history (at one time a bronze nummus was a day&#039;s pay for a laborer). I wonder if they would have gone to money changers to exchange gold for bronze, or perhaps direct to the government which would then be another distribution channel for freshly minted bronze.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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