Let’s delve into some history 🙂

In my economics book, I recently read about clipping and reeding coins. The clipping was when the Roman government couldn’t raise the taxes any but they wanted more money. So they would take the coins they received and shaved off the edges. The reeding comes in, a little later when the Roman people realized that they were being cheated.

Keep reading to find out all the juicy details 😉 Lol

Let me tell you a little background on coins first

Coins

Before coins people would either trade or grow what they needed. Coins first appeared around the 7th and 6th centuries BC. They were first used and possibly invented in Asia Minor. They soon spread to Greece, Persia and further. The bartering system was still prominent and still is today.

The Clipping and Reeding of Coins

The Roman government wanted stuff, a lot of stuff. But they couldn’t get more money. Because the way they got money was by taxing. They had already taxed everything they could and they had raised the taxes as high as they dared. So they started counterfeiting. A denarius was the Romans main coin, it was 94 percent silver. To counterfeit, the Roman government would take the denariuses they got and shave the edges off. Then recast the shavings into more coins. The Roman people quickly realized that their coins were smaller and lighter. Soon they started refusing the Clipped coins or reduced the value of them. The Roman people then thought of this idea. They put notches into the edges of their coins{Reeding the coins}. If a coin didn’t have those edges then it had been clipped. Then the Roman government tried something else. They started melting the coins down only this time they mixed in some other metal. Soon the Roman people figured this out too. So they started saving their original silver denariuses and spending the new ones. The amount of silver in the coins got less and less.

That’s why our coins here in the U.S.A. are reeded. Our coins were once silver {at least the ones that are reeded} but people started keeping the more valuable silver coins and spending the ones that weren’t as valuable. Unlike the Romans however we have a law that states that we couldn’t reduce the value of the debased coins. So if it’s a quarter then it stays $0.25, that’s what caused the coin shortage in the 1960’s here in North America. Everyone kept the silver coins because silver is more valuable than nickel or copper.

I hope you guys enjoyed that 😀

If I missed anything please let me know! I love learning and hopefully you guys learned something from this post. If you did, put it in the comments! It’s always a good thing to learn something new!

I am going to try to get you guys a little history, at least every other Tuesday.

Until Next Time,

Froggy Crochet 🙂