Coinage of India

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Gold Coins, Silver Coins, Coins, World coins for you, American, British, Indian, Japanese, Euros, Pound, Lots More. A coin is a piece of hard material 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 to facilitate trade. They are most often issued by a government. Coins are usually metal or alloy, or sometimes made of synthetic materials. They are usually disc shaped. Coins made of valuable metal are stored in large quantities as bullion coins. Other coins are used as money in everyday transactions, circulating alongside banknotes. Usually the highest value coin in circulation (i.e. excluding bullion coins) is worth less than the lowest-value note. In the last hundred years, the face value of circulation coins has occasionally been lower than the value of the metal they contain, for example due to inflation. If the difference becomes significant, the issuing authority may decide to withdraw these coins from circulation, or the public may decide to melt the coins down or hoard them (see Gresham's law). Exceptions to the rule of face value being higher than content value also occur for some bullion coins made of silver or gold (and, rarely, other metals, such as platinum or palladium), intended for collectors or investors in precious metals. Examples of modern gold collector/investor coins include the British sovereign minted by the United Kingdom, the American Gold Eagle minted by the United States, the Canadian Gold Maple Leaf minted by Canada, and the Krugerrand, minted by South Africa. While the Eagle, Maple Leaf, and Sovereign coins have nominal (purely symbolic) face values; the Krugerrand does not. Historically, a great quantity of coinage metals (including alloys) and other materials (e.g. porcelain) have been used to produce coins for circulation, collection, and metal investment: bullion coins often serve as more convenient stores of assured metal quantity and purity than other bullion.] The first coins were developed independently in Iron Age Anatolia and Archaic Greece, India and China around the 7th and 6th centuries BCE. Coins spread rapidly in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, throughout Greece and Persia, and further to the Balkans. A gold coin is a coin that is made mostly or entirely of gold. Traditionally, gold coins have been circulation coins, including coin-like bracteates and dinars. Since recent decades, however, gold coins are mainly produced as bullion coins to investors and as commemorative coins to collectors. While also modern gold coins are legal tender, they are not observed in everyday financial transactions, as the metal value normally exceeds the nominal value. For example, the American Gold Eagle, given a denomination of 50 USD, has a metal value of more than 1,000 USD. Together with gold bars, gold coins are possessed by central banks as gold reserves within the larger category of forex reserves. When most countries had a gold standard, gold was also used to back paper money: a specific banknote could, in theory, be exchanged into a specific amount of gold. Gold has been used as money for many reasons. It is fungible, with a low spread between the prices to buy and sell. Gold is also easily transportable, as it has a high value to weight ratio, compared to other commodities, such as silver. Gold can be divided into smaller units, without destroying its metal value; it can also be melted into ingots, and re-coined. The density of gold is higher than most other metals, making it difficult to pass counterfeits. Additionally, gold is extremely unreactive, hence it does not tarnish or corrode over time. Gold was used in commerce (beside other precious metals) in the Ancient Near East since the Bronze Age, but coins proper originated much later, during the 6th century BC, in Anatolia. The name of king Croesus of Lydia remains associated with the invention (although the Parian Chronicle mentions Pheidon of Argos as a contender). In 546 BC, Croesus was captured by the Persians, who adopted gold as the main metal for their coins.[1][2] Ancient Greek coinage contained a number of gold coins issued by the various city states. The Ying yuan is an early gold coin minted in ancient China. Larger units of monetary value and exchange such as the talent were the ancient equivalents of the modern 400-troy-ounce "good delivery" gold bullion bar. The German gold mark was introduced in 1873 in the German Empire, replacing the various local Gulden coins of the Holy Roman Empire. Gold coins then had a very long period as a primary form of money, only falling into disuse in the early 20th century. Most of the world stopped making gold coins as currency by 1933, as countries switched from the gold standard due to hoarding during the worldwide economic crisis of the Great Depression Gold Coins,Silver Coins,Coins,World coins for you,American,British,Indian,Japanese,Euros,Pound,Lots More.