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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 22903, member: 57463&quot;]I have devoted a lot of thought and research to this problem of defining &quot;coin&quot; (as well as the other terms we use such as &quot;token&quot; and &quot;banknote&quot; and &quot;scrip&quot;).&nbsp; I do not have any immutable answers.&nbsp; I do know that dictionary style one-liners will not work.&nbsp; About three years ago, I posted this definition to rec.collecting.coins:</p><p>&gt;&gt;</p><p>I define COIN as &quot;a durable and conveniently transported physical form of money,usually metal and usually a disk, though occasionally of other materials andshapes.&quot;&nbsp; From there, I expand to explain the history and uses of &quot;coins.&quot; There is no other convenient way to do this defining.&nbsp; It is an orwellian fallacy to attempt to define &quot;coin&quot; by a simple one sentence integration and differentiation.</p><p>&lt;&lt;</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Why? Why does a coin have to have a mark?&nbsp; Its shape and size and other details of its physical state speak volumes.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>What is an &quot;authority&quot;?</p><p><br /></p><p>I agree that coins do have marks of <u>identification.</u>&nbsp; Identification of the issuer has been an important aspect of coinage from the beginning.&nbsp; That, however, is only tradition and is not required by the nature of the object. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>British gold coins have no statement of value on them.&nbsp; In the 1600s, it was the case in Great Britain that silver coins were accepted by count (&quot;tale&quot;) and not by weight, even though many were clipped.&nbsp; At the same time gold coins were (legally) weighed, even though they hardly circulated at all, being for large transactions.&nbsp; By custom, you could pass a gold coin or three or ten, but for truly large transactions, the coins were weighed, not counted.</p><p><br /></p><p>If coins are minted to &quot;some standard&quot; but that standard is not known or announced, then it is as if the coin is minted to no standard.&nbsp; Mexican coins stated their weight and fineness at a time when US coins did not.&nbsp; In the 1790s and 1800s, American silver coins passed by weight in world trade. There are many such counter-examples that defeat almost any definition I have seen.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Now, you introduce a new term, &quot;primitive money.&quot;&nbsp; Do you have a definition for it?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Historically, the so-called &quot;intrinsic&quot; value <u>was </u> the circulating value. What you refer to is &quot;money of account&quot; or &quot;denomination.&quot;&nbsp; The Tons of US silver coins left for the Caribbean specifically because the stated vale was <u>less</u> than the &quot;intrinsic&quot; value. Some authors in numismatics wring their hands of that, but I do not.&nbsp; The coins could not have left America except for the fact that Americans received greater value in the things those coins bought.&nbsp; Several times in US history, a dollar contained more than a dollar&#039;s worth of silver. They were still &quot;coins&quot; by definition.</p><p><br /></p><p>My point here is to that any definition of &quot;coin&quot; -- and your views were fine, really -- has some problems with it as long as we try to define narrowly as the dictionary does.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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