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Message:: [QUOTE="kaparthy, post: 986759, member: 57463"]The ancient world was more than Rome.  Did it end with the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 or the Fall of Constantinople in 1453?  China and India had their own independent experiences, as well.  Chinese cash became uniform about 250 BC and with many minor exceptions could have circulated at par until almost 1900.  On the one hand very little of the world outside of cites was on a metallic economy, with savings (hoarding) in the cities keeping older coins unworn for lifetimes.  Debasements had direct effects, of course, but until coins became money of account with the "franc" about 1550, Gresham's Law was not the correct statement of the problem.  Taxation drove coins out of circulation, as wealthy people had them melted and made into "plate" (household objects).  In The Big Problem of Small Change, Sargent and Velde tell of a Spanish town in the late Middle Ages where Roman coins -- previously counterstruck with new values -- still circulated.  By analogy to modern times, Eric Newman said in a COAC paper that colonial coppers (even counterfeits) continued to circulate in western Appalachia into the 1830s.  If you think about it, the "life expenctancy" of ancient coins continues today ...  They are here and they move from hand to hand.  Sic semper.[/QUOTE]