Trade coins are coins

minted Minted is an online marketplace of premium design goods created by independent artists and designers. The company sources art and design from a community of more than 16,000 independent artists from around the world. Minted offers artists two bus ...

by a government, but not necessarily

legal tender Legal tender is a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment for any monetary debt. Each jurisdiction determines what is legal tender, but essentially it is anything which when offered ("tendered") in pa ...

within the territory of the issuing country. These quasi bullion coins (in rarer cases small change) were thus actually

export An export in international trade is a good produced in one country that is sold into another country or a service provided in one country for a national or resident of another country. The seller of such goods or the service provider is an ...

goods In economics, goods are items that satisfy human wants and provide utility, for example, to a consumer making a purchase of a satisfying product. A common distinction is made between goods which are transferable, and services, which are not tran ...

- that is,

bullion Bullion is non-ferrous metal that has been refined to a high standard of elemental purity. The term is ordinarily applied to bulk metal used in the production of coins and especially to precious metals such as gold and silver. It comes from t ...

in the form of

coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order t ...

s, used to bulk buy important goods from other countries, where they could be bought at a favourable price, compared to the purchasing power of the same amount of bullion within the trade coins' country of origin. A distinction must be drawn between full value bullion trade coins, that were used in ordinary peacetime trade on the one hand, and on the other hand debased coins, that were usually made with the intention to deceive. Such debased "trade coins" were occasionally minted during times of war, e.g. the Prussian

ephraimiten An Ephraimite (German Ephraimit, plural Ephraimiten) was a debased coin part of whose silver content was replaced with copper. Ephraimites, as they came to be called, were issued under the authority of Frederick the Great of Prussia in the Duchy ...

, silver-clad copper coins minted during the

Seven Years' War The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was a global conflict that involved most of the European Great Powers, and was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Other concurrent conflicts include the French and Indian War (1754� ...

. If these were ever accepted or approved as legal tender, they would be valued far below the regular coins, their value being calculated according to a specified formula. The conversion rates were even then usually significantly below the intrinsic value of the coins, to cover costs of melting and recoinage etc. Since the 1920s there have been hardly any true trade coins, though some are still traded by coin collectors with a premium. Their role has now been taken over by (paper or electronic)

United States dollar The United States dollar ( symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the officia ...

s as a world currency.

Examples

One of the most famous trade coins of the 18th century is the Austrian

Maria Theresa thaler The Maria Theresa thaler (MTT) is a silver bullion coin and a type of Conventionsthaler that has been used in world trade continuously since it was first minted in 1741. It is named after Maria Theresa who ruled Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia fr ...

. Although dated 1780, it has been minted continuously in Austria well into the 21st century for sale to collectors. The Maria Theresa thaler was previously exported in large quantities to East Africa and the Middle East. It was so highly regarded in Africa that its purchasing power for goods and raw materials was higher there than in Austria. In preparation for the slow transition to the

gold standard A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the early 1920s, and from the la ...

in England between 1717 and 1816, in trade with the Prussians England preferred 5 and 10 thaler gold pieces (

Friedrich d'or The Friedrich d'or was a Prussian gold coin (pistole) nominally worth 5 silver Prussian thalers. It was subsequently copied by other North German states under their own rulers' names (''August-, Friedrich-August-, Christian d'or'') and valued at 4 ...

) in exchange for quality goods. The Friedrich d'or thus became a trade coin, while it was also current in Prussia itself (although with a decreasing exchange rate against the silver

Reichstaler The ''Reichsthaler'' (; modern spelling Reichstaler), or more specifically the ''Reichsthaler specie'', was a standard thaler silver coin introduced by the Holy Roman Empire in 1566 for use in all German states, minted in various versions for the ...

, see

bimetallism Bimetallism, also known as the bimetallic standard, is a monetary standard in which the value of the monetary unit is defined as equivalent to certain quantities of two metals, typically gold and silver, creating a fixed rate of exchange betwee ...

). The Hungarian and Dutch gold

ducat The ducat () coin was used as a trade coin in Europe from the later Middle Ages from the 13th to 19th centuries. Its most familiar version, the gold ducat or sequin containing around of 98.6% fine gold, originated in Venice in 1284 and gained wi ...

s, minted for centuries with a stable fineness, were esteemed trade coins. Other trade coins were the so-called silver

trade dollar Trade dollars are silver coins minted as trade coins by various countries to facilitate trade with China and the Orient. They all approximated in weight and fineness to the Spanish dollar, which had set the standard for a de facto common currency ...

s used by Mexico and the USA to buy South American or Chinese goods relatively cheaply. These countries mostly had a currency based on the

silver standard The silver standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of silver. Silver was far more widespread than gold as the monetary standard worldwide, from the Sumerians 3000 BC until 1873. Following t ...

or even a paper currency, and domestically set the value of silver too high even though the world market price of silver had long been lower.

Bibliography

* Heinz Fengler u. Autoren: ''Lexikon Numismatik''. transpress Verlag für Verkehrswesen, Berlin 1988,

External links

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Trade Coins
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