Reply To: Jewish Money History and Historical Jewish Coin Chart

Pre-Lydian Coinage?

Published on Thursday, July 02, 2009

Colin Kraay, in his 1964 article on coinage, mentions that coins would still have to be weighed due to their irregularity. In medieval times, merchants would have coin weights to make sure that the coins would have the right weight, thousands of years after coins supposedly eliminated the need.

This problem has persisted even to modern times. One of my rebbeim once went fundraising in Mexico, about a half century ago. On his way out, he exchanged his Mexican currency for dollars. They weighed his coins. They were deficient, and he lost money on the transaction.