Ancients Face Value.

Gold and silver coins were usually measured in bulk by weight, not by counting.

For debased-silver and bronze coins, the question of "face value" is a much harder one to answer. The ancients themselves almost certainly knew which coins were worth what amount of money, simply by experience. If you were given some worn-flat American coins, you'd have no problem sorting them out by denomination, even though you can't read anything on the coins themselves. You do this simply by matching the sizes. The ancients were no different in this respect.

But this information has often not survived down through the centuries. We know the Roman Imperial system because it was well and widely documented. The various Greek systems less so, and the Roman Provincials even less so again. This is why such coins frequently are not given a denomination today, because we simply don't know what the ancients called them or what denomination they were tariffed at.

Coins without a denomination mark could also be retariffed easily by proclamation of the issuing authority. The ancient Roman "denarius" was originally worth 10 copper asses; as the as shrunk in size during the mid Republic period, the denarius was officially retariffed at 16 copper asses, a value it remained at for the rest of its existence.

Finally, the entire concept of coins having a "fixed" denomination in relation to other coins was still rather fluid and the process of using money to buy things involved a lot more haggling than it does today. Rarely did a householder go down to a store and buy some goods with a silver coin and be given some copper coins in change. The different metals were generally used for different things and rarely interchanged; when you did want to change money from one form to another, you couldn't simply go down to the bank - banks weren't invented yet. You had to go to the moneychanger, who would happily change your money for you - for a fee. Theoretically a gold aureus was worth 25 denarii or 100 bronze sestertii, but if you handed over a pile of sestertii to the moneychanger and asked for an aureus in exchange, he might take 120 sestertii - the remainder being his fee. If a 20% fee seemed too high to you, then he might take only 110 sestertii and give you 25 silver denarii for them instead.

I have heard from several sources that the value of gold at least has remained fairly constant--a stater or aureus would buy the same number of loaves of bread (from a baker, not industrial bread) 2,000 years ago as a similarly sized coin would today. Silver I think has slipped in terms of its ratio to gold, largely thanks to the massive quantities mined from South America by the Spanish in the 1500s-1700s.

It is also important to note that the face value of Roman coins usually exceeded the melt value. Nearly all imperial (non-provincial) coins issued until the 3rd century contain the letters "SC" or Senatus Consulto--a promise that the coin was good for face value and not the much lower bullion value. The denarius was similarly over-valued, but not significantly so.

Also, it may be worth noting that we know very little about the role of bronze coins after the death of Constantine I. The roughly US cent-sized coins were the continuation of the follis from the late 3rd century, but by the late emperor, coins just fit into 4 rough size categories-- AE1 (larger than a half dollar and very rare), AE2 (usually about quarter size, but smaller than a half dollar), AE3 (nickel through cent size), and AE4 (generally smaller than a dime, possibly as small as 9mm). We have no clue what the majority of these coins were called, or how they relate to one another.

Platinum had been discovered in the 16th century or so, IIRC, and its name literally means "little silver", because it was thought to be an inferior substitute for silver.
As in, historically, one important use of platinum was fake silver coins. Seriously. (It also became used in fake gold coins once people figured out that it was the closest they could get a hold of to gold's density.)

There were no platinum coins as such until the 19th century. And even that was a rather unique experiment, but that's another story.


Generally, the question of metals, and especially alloys, used in ancient coins is probably worth its own discussion (orichalcum - which is basically brass - and electrum are only two of the weird examples). The relation of such to face value is not very well known, however.
(Do we even know the silver/copper rate for any period? I know it was very uncommon to have a coin of the same denomination in both silver and copper - like both a silver and a copper hemilitron - but IIRC it did happen occasionally. I suspect there had never been a denomination used for both gold and copper, though!)

in ancient Greece , the moneychangers were sitting on the agora on a 'trapeza' a bank in Greek , so even in that time , you went to the bank for changing money , albert