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Message:: [QUOTE="Ardatirion, post: 1706563, member: 9204"]Many who write about "emergency coinages" imagine some drastic event limiting the supply of the metal, most often military activity. No one seems to acknowledge the fact that small denomination coins in any period before the mid-19th century are struck to ridiculously tight profit margins for the mint. A minute fluctuation in the cost of metal, labor, or transport can quickly eliminate the meagre seignorage profit, and no mint will long produce coins at loss. So yes, they may be an "emergency coinage," but of the kind of mundane, everyday emergency that mints faced up to the modern period. Another plausible explanation, though even more conjectural than the above, is that lead coinages were struck to limit their area of circulation and reduce a specie drain. Take, for example, the iron coins of the Southern Song dynasty. To prevent the bronze cash from flowing irrevocably over the border into Jin-controlled territory, the government instead cast iron coins to circulate in the border regions. Compare this with the leads of Alexander Jannaeus found widely in the Transjordan region. (Disclaimer - this is merely speculation)[/QUOTE]