Money supplies

From the spread of silver as commodity money in the early modern world to mass-produced national currency in the nineteenth century, coins had a dual nature. They supplied facts about the past when they were investigated by antiquarians, and they required knowledge of materials and their supply when used as currency. This essay explores a little-researched borderland between economic historyand historyofscience:the work of assayers and mint officials, where antiquarian and commercial interests merged.