Hacksilver

As hacksilver is called vormünzliches money in terms of chopped silver objects such as jewelry, coins, bars, or small plates. The trade value was crushed, weighed and exchanged according to the value of the metal. For this purpose also artistically valuable work were crushed and reduced to their value of pure metal part.

Similar currencies were also in the form of chopped items from other metals such as gold or bronze alloy.

History

Hacksilver found in the trade of Egypt with Greece and Asia Minor in the 6th to 4th centuries BC use.

There are a number of hack silver findings that apparently still dated to the Roman Empire and the Migration Period. In early medieval Arabic coins were also imported, to enforce local coinage, crushed.

In 6 AD until the end of the 10th century AD are in Northern Europe including the British Isles, but especially in the Baltic region, increasingly crushed coins and silver plates used as hack silver (see hoard of Harrogate ). The occurrence of hacksilver shows a distinct boundary along the Elbe. Neither the West nor in the south of the river deposits have so far been detected with hacksilver.

In parts of East Asia is hacksilver received until the 20th century as a currency.