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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Marsyas Mike, post: 25263416, member: 85693&quot;]Well, I&#039;m no archaeologist (or historian), so I am not sure what is &quot;proved&quot; or not.&nbsp; But in my opinion, it sure seems likely that Constantinian-era (and later) small LRB&#039;s circulated in Sardis, if only because so many were found in the rubble - I doubt people were collecting them the way numismatists do nowadays.&nbsp; If I had to guess, I&#039;d say that they worked as small change next to the large Byzantine folles that were being issued in those days.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>[USER=148921]@rasielsuarez[/USER] and others note that some (all?) Constantinian issues had been demonitized centuries before.&nbsp; But I&#039;m not sure how enforced these laws were: what government was doing the enforcing?&nbsp; Eastern Roman (Byzantine)?&nbsp; If there were scads of small LRBs still to be found, people probably used them.&nbsp; That so many were found at Sardis certainly points in that direction.&nbsp; Perhaps they were more of a token coinage, like those &quot;store cards&quot; issued during the USA Civil War, not &quot;really&quot; money, but functioning like money.&nbsp; You couldn&#039;t pay your taxes with them, but you could make change in a tavern, shop, etc.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Somewhat along the same lines: the other day at the US Post Office I was given a 2007 Canadian one cent piece in change.&nbsp; Not only is it not legal tender in the USA, they stopped making them in Canada too.&nbsp; Yet here it is.&nbsp; As I live in Indiana, Canadian coins were often found in change here back in the 60s-90s (I&#039;d look for them when I was a kid), though I haven&#039;t encountered one in a long time.&nbsp; What ever it&#039;s official status, this Canadian penny still functioned as money, and it will do so, at least until somebody refuses to take it when I try to buy something with it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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