Coin Collecting Coins The Value Of A Coin Coin Debasement

A coin is generally a piece of hard material, traditionally metal and usually in the shape of a disc, which is used as a form of money. With banknotes, coins make up the cash forms of all modern money systems. Coins are used for lower valued units, notes for the higher values.

1 Collecting coins

2 The value of a coin

However, in modern times, most coins are made of a base metal and their value comes strictly from their status as fiat money. This means that that the value of the coin is decreed by government fiat rather than agreed by the people, which really makes it less a coin and more a token in the strict sense.

To distinguish between these two types of coins, as well as from other forms of tokens, which have been used as money, monetary scholars have defined three criteria that an object must meet to be a "true coin". These criteria are:

By the above definition, the invention and first known usage of coins comes from the Kingdom of LydiaSee 110 Lydia for the asteroid. Lydia was an ancient kingdom of Asia Minor, known to Homer as Maeonia . Its principal city was Sardis. The boundaries of Lydia varied across the centuries. It was first bounded by Mysia Major, Caria, Phrygia and Ionia. Late circa 643-630 B.C. Under three generations of Lydian kings, the money of Lydia gradually moved from being lumps of electrumElectrum is a naturally occurring alloy of gold, silver, and lesser amounts of copper. It has a pale yellow color, and was used in some of the earliest coins in the world. Composition Most commonly, electrum consists of approximately 75% gold, the remaind (a naturally occurring mixture of silver and gold) to coins of a guaranteed weight and purity, marked with the seal of the King. True coins also developed very close to this timeframe in both IndiaThe Republic of India is a large multicultural country in South Asia, with a population of over one billion. The Indian economy is the fourth largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, and is the world's second-fastest growing economy. and ChinaThis article is on the geographic and cultural entity. For other meanings, see China (disambiguation). China ( Traditional Chinese: , Simplified Chinese: , Hanyu Pinyin: Zhongguo, Wade-Giles: Chung-kuo) is a country in continental East Asia with some oute. The History of coinsThe history of coins extends from ancient times to the present. Coins are still widely used for monetary and other purposes. Any history of coins is going to be very incomplete, money being a central theme in human history since its invention. One could a is a long and interesting one.

3 Coin debasement

frame USThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in price levels, 1800Events March 14 Cardinal Barnaba Chiaramonti is elected pope Pius VII. March 21 Pius VII becomes Pope April 24 US Library of Congress founded. May 15 Napoleon Bonaparte crosses the Alps and invades Italy. June 14 Battle of Marengo, Napoleon defeats the Au - 2000This page is about the year 2000. See 2000 AD for the UK comic book, Number 2000 for other uses. 2000 is a leap year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar), and also the International Year for a Culture of Peace''. Events Y2K passes without the seri
Red line marks leaving silver standard

Throughout history, governments have been known to create more coinage than their supply of precious metals would allow. By replacing some fraction of a coin's precious metal content with a base metal, a government reduces the value of the coins (thereby "debasing" their money) and would then produce more coins then they could otherwise. Debasement of money almost always leads to price inflation unless price controls are also instituted by the governing authority. Some consider a classic example of this phenomenon to be the behavior of price levels in the United States since 1964 (the last year United States Coins were minted of silver).

4 Features of modern coinage

The milled edges still found on many coins were originally designed to show that none of the valuable metal had been shaved off the coin. Prior to the use of milled edged coins, circulating currency suffered from "shaving", a common problem where members of the public would cut the edges off circulating coins made of precious metals. Circulating unmilled British sterling silver coins were known to be shaved to almost half of their minted weight. This form of debasement in Tudor England led to the formulation of Gresham's Law. The monarch would have to periodically recall, paying only bullion value of the silver, and re-mint circulating coins.

Traditionally the side of a coin carrying a picture of the head of a monarch or other authority, or a national emblem, is called the obverse, or colloquially heads. The back side is called the reverse, or colloquially tails. However, the rule is violated in some cases. [1] Another rule is that the side carrying the year of minting is the obverse.

Coins are popularly used as a sort of two-sided die; in order to choose between two options with a random possibility, one choice will be labelled "heads" and the other "tails," and a coin will be flipped or "tossed" to see whether the heads or tails side comes up on top. See Bernoulli trial; a fair coin is defined to have the probability of heads (in the parlance of Bernoulli trials, a "success") exactly 0.5. A widely publicised example of an asymmetrical coin is the Belgian one euro coin. See also coin flipping.

Coins are sometimes falsified to make one side weigh more.

Some coins are so thin they can only be struck on one side, they are called bracteates.

6 External links

The Numismatic Frontier article surveying the variety of coins in the world.
Coin directory A dedicated to numismatic community site and huge catalog of coin resources.

Numismatics

<Hide>

Home > Coin