Trade Coinage Definition / List Help

There were some trade ducats circulating in Europe. A few countries issued those. You could look into that.

OK, much more recent. Still European, and silver, issued by a Belgium, France, Gibraltar ... just to name a few. Ecu!

Looks like it was prelude to euro.
Belgium issued 2 through 20 ecu (I'm staying with silver) 1987 - 1998.
France - 15 ecus, 1990 - 1995.
Gibraltar - 2.8 - 35 ecus, 1991 - 1995.

Funny, these were the first (European) three countries I checked. Now, I see, maybe they are the only ones that struck ecu coinage.

There are two earlier " Trade dollars" issued by Britain. The earliest, the "portcullis dollars" of 1600, are extremely rare and expensive.

The "anchor money" coins (1/16, 1/8, 1/4 and 1/2 dollars) of the 1820s are usually filed in the catalogues under "British West Indies" or some such. Anchor money is relatively cheap and obtainable.

Both were intended as colonial trade currency to compete with the Spanish dollar, and both were failures in the sense that they were never really accepted as trade coins in the lands intended for their use; none of the three Britsh attempts at a " Trade dollar" came close to supplanting the Spanish dollar as the trade coin of choice.

I don't know how far back in time you want your collection of silver trade coins to go, but some other silver "trade coins" I can think of are:

- the Indian rupee - the old "Mughal-style" with Persian-Arabic on both sides, not the British Colonial types. They circulated through much of the Indian Ocean, carried by both European and local traders. The Indian rupee was mentioned alongside the British shilling, the Dutch guilder and the Spanish dollar on the "Proclamation of 1800", as silver coins commonly in use in early colonial Australia.

- The Bohemian pragergroschen - ancestor of the thaler and the first large silver coin to be issued in quantity in Europe. Not as large as a thaler, it circulated far beyond the borders of the central European kingdom that issued it.

- The Islamic dirham - while not as popular as it's gold counterpart the dinar, the dimensions of the dirham were stipulated by the Quran. As such, it was an accepted coin throughout the Islamic world, and beyond. Hoards of them have even been found in England; the Vikings seemed to prefer them to the small, debased silver coins prevalent in Europe at the time.

- The Roman denarius - it circulated not just within the Empire, but was well accepted by the barbarians beyond it, and as far as Roman traders ventured. Hoards of Roman denarii are found as far away as Russia, Scandinavia, India and Ethiopia.

- the Athenian "owl" tetradrachm, the world's first silver trade coin. They were such a popular and well-trusted coin that even as artistic techniques advanced to allow more lifelike designs and portraiture, the "owls" were kept deliberately archaic. Hoards are found throughout the Mediterranean (they seem to have been especially popular in Egypt, which had no coinage of its own) and down the Red Sea coast.

Many of these coins are quite cheap for their age, simply because they were extremely common trade coins and frequently hoarded.

@JGFINDRING - I have seen some Philippine Peso with chopmarks... but these US Admin Philippine Peso were only issued in 1903-1906, afterwhich (1907 up) their size and weight were reduced because of it became overvalued.

@SAP - would the newly-independent Central / South American coins of 1820s (and up) also qualifies as Trade coinage, since they circulated legally in the Philippines after the termination of countermarking/stamping in 1839?

I would agree with that.

Any of the post-independence coins that were struck to the same size, weight and fineness as the old Spanish colonial dollar were presumably intended by the new countries to replace the Spanish dollar in both oriental and domestic trade. The 8 reales coins of Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Peru and Chile, as well as the 8 soles of Bolivia, all qualify as the successors of the Spanish dollar and would have been accepted as such, though only the Mexican coins seem to have actually been exported to Asia in quantity. The Mexican 8 reales doubly qualifies as a trade coin because Mexico continued to strike them specifically for foreign trade long after the 8 reales had been supplanted by the peso for domestic use.

With no trade fleets of their own, the new South American countries would have seen the widespread usage of their coins as trade coins as more a forlorn hope than an actual government policy. There would have been reduced trade between the Americas and Asia once the Spanish no longer controlled the entire trade route; the occasional visiting foreign merchant ship could not have matched the sheer numbers of coins the Spanish treasure fleets could carry.