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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;robinjojo, post: 4575692, member: 110226&quot;]You&#039;re right about the Athenian tetradrachms and Spanish 8 reales as being bullion and treated as such by merchants, most of whom were not literate and relied on the appearance of a coin, its design and letters to follow a consistent pattern.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>However, I do think of these coins a being integral with commerce in their days, both locally and across other kingdoms and regions.&nbsp; They were valued for their metal content and they were also issued by governing authorities, so they were official coins and not random pieces of privately produced silver or gold.&nbsp; They had assigned values based on official standards.&nbsp; So, the fine points can be discussed, but in the end, in my view, these are coins used in trade, hence trade coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>As was the case for centuries, bronze coinage generally support day-to-day transactions.&nbsp; Silver and gold were used for larger transactions, both locally and internationally.&nbsp; They were also the metals of choice for hoarding wealth, often buried and forgotten, only to resurface thousands of years later and sold to collectors worldwide.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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