What can Coins & Tokens tell us?
In addition to documenting many of the changes noted above, coins and tokens can contribute the following kinds of information: • Absolute dating information (but with caution: tokens were sometimes intentionally misdated to evade laws and often circulated for many decades) • Intensity or distribution of trade between different regions • Approximate locations of political/economic borders (laws and exchange rates tend to keep certain coins mainly within borders of either issuing state or state where the exchange rate is most favourable) • Exchange rates (designed to attract certain coins or discourage others) • Tokens of private businesses (including banks) document the business names and often the proprietors, locations, and nature of the business • Pictures on tokens record details of buildings, ships, agricultural tools and other hardware • Designs and slogans on tokens record political views, major political events and people’s views of those events • Prevalence of counterfeits and
