Trivia - Edges

Well, before the practice started it was a big deal. There were no such things as vending machines or counting machines - there were only people. Banks didn't even exist in the form that we know them. Back then, bankers were known simply as moneychangers. And they would set up shop in the marektplace every day. They made their living by exchanging coins of the country they were in for coins from other places. They managed to do this because most people had coins from all over, and this was because coins were hard to come by. But if you wanted to shop, then you had to have coins in the local currency. So people would go to the tables of the moneychangers and exchange their coins.

But the moneychangers did this for a living, and the only way they would exchange coins was by weight. And if they were not certain of the fineness of silver in a certain coin, well they'd do an assay and then they'd exchange it. For gold coins, they could tell the fineness by use of a touch stone and the accuracy was such that thyey could tell to within 1% or so what the fineness of the gold was. There wasn't any fooling these guys - they knew their coins. And they also knew that the world abounded in scoundrels who would clip a coin in a New York second ( even though New York didn't exist yet ). That's why they weighed them all.

Of course after they exchanged all these coins, they would take them to the local mint, have the coins all melted and restruck into the local currency. But to do this they had to pay the mint and the mint had to pay the local govt. That's how most of the mints got the bullion they needed to produce coins, bullion was in short supply back then. And that's also how the local govt. replenished their treasuries - it was literally a money making proposition

Of course in times when trade was slow or bullion simply could not be had, then the govt, had to step up and provide the bullion. For if trade died completely, so would the govt. And in these times the govt, would of course lose money. They didn't like that. So when the idea came along to produce a coin with a reeded edge or an edge design - governments the world over were very happy. No longer would they have to step up and provide bullion for the mints to produce coins. If a coin was clipped, and the edge design was missing - the merchants simply wouldn't accept it. In effect it was worthless. So the only thing the holder of a clipped coin could do was sell it to the govt. based on its weight - and again the govt. was making money.

So - people stopped clipping coins, it just wasn't worth it anymore. Of course that's when counterfeits really took off.

I think that's where those folks you knew came in Carl

 

See what you started Clinker - now ya got me writing books