Since this subject seems about to die without the comment I was looking
for, I guess I'd better say it my self. People didn't trust banks! Banks
and other investment institutions perform a recirculation service when it
comes to coin. All people in the past saved money and some families saved
large quantities from many years. I think it's hard for us today to
realize that really rich family institutions may have had chests of money
hidden away in the basement for a hundred years or so.
david G Orr
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HISTORICAL cc
ARCHAEOLOGY
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> Re: Coin Identification
08/16/2005 03:32
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HISTORICAL
ARCHAEOLOGY
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Not to beat the dead horse into a new animal but its great
to make sure the point is made. As Virgil says the Spanish
money (made in prodigious quantities) served to help the
developing Atlantic economies have some sort of mediuim of
exchange other than goods(tobacco etc.) The shortage of
money worsened in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century which produced the overstruck spanish coins of the
English Caribbean possessions and the wide variety of money
used in eastern North America. The English even struck small
images of george III on the Spanish 8 reale pieces, many of
which were old and worn producing the memorable parliamentary
quip: "The Bank to make its Spanish dollar pass stamped the
head of a fool on the head of an ass".
At our excavations at City Point,Virginia, small cut one
half and one real "bits"(quartered and halved from two real
coins) are encountered as a further demonstartion of
this.Much of this continued in circulation for quite a long
time.
