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Message:: [QUOTE="Finn235, post: 8552930, member: 98035"]I agree that technically the fact that they were weighed out according to a fixed standard and stamped by an authority to declare value and validity would technically make them coins. I also agree that since probably only a few were ever made, and they were made once and then nobody ever stamped weights of gold or silver for at least 600-700 years would disqualify them as being the "invention of coinage" to the extent that the Lydians/Ionians successfully monetized their economy within the span of just a few decades, and such changes were permanent. Also the issue of Chinese coins is an intriguing one - early Chinese knives and spades were functional objects that were traded for the content of their metal, and at some point they stopped being functional and the people casting them began inscribing them with the mark of authority. When exactly this happened of course is a matter of heated debate. I've seen claims (mostly by -totally unbiased- Chinese sources) that the earliest knife and spade coins were being produced as early as 1,000 BC, and also claims that the inscriptions didn't appear until as late as 500-400 BC. Similarly contentious is the appearance of punchmarked silver in India within about a century of the earliest Anatolian coins.[/QUOTE]