A coin is a small object, usually round and flat, 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 often have images, numerals, or text on them. The faces of coins or medals are sometimes called the obverse and the reverse, referring to the front and back sides, respectively. The obverse of a coin is commonly called heads, because it often depicts the head of a prominent person, and the reverse is known as tails.
Tael, also known as the tahil and by other names, can refer to any one of several weight measures used in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It usually refers to the Chinese tael, a part of the Chinese system of weights and currency. The Chinese tael was standardized to 50 grams in 1959.
The Philippine peso, also referred to by its Filipino name piso, is the official currency of the Philippines. It is subdivided into 100 sentimo, also called centavos.
Shekel or sheqel is an ancient Mesopotamian coin, usually of silver. A shekel was first a unit of weight—very roughly 11 grams —and became currency in ancient Tyre and ancient Carthage and then in ancient Israel under the Maccabees.
The Spanish dollar, also known as the piece of eight, is a silver coin of approximately 38 mm (1.5 in) diameter worth eight Spanish reales. It was minted in the Spanish Empire following a monetary reform in 1497 with content 25.563 g (0.8219 ozt) fine silver. It was widely used as the first international currency because of its uniformity in standard and milling characteristics. Some countries countermarked the Spanish dollar so it could be used as their local currency.
The aureus was a gold coin of ancient Rome originally valued at 25 pure silver denarii. The aureus was regularly issued from the 1st century BC to the beginning of the 4th century AD, when it was replaced by the solidus. The aureus was about the same size as the denarius, but heavier due to the higher density of gold.
The ducat coin was used as a trade coin in Europe from the later Middle Ages to the 19th century. Its most familiar version, the gold ducat or sequin containing around 3.5 grams of 98.6% fine gold, originated in Venice in 1284 and gained wide international acceptance over the centuries. Similarly named silver ducatons also existed. The gold ducat circulated along with the Florentine florin and preceded the modern British pound sterling and the United States dollar.
Philippine peso coins are issued by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for circulation in the Philippines and are currently available in seven denominations. The Philippine peso has been in use since Spanish rule.
Aksumite currency was coinage produced and used within the Kingdom of Aksum centered in present-day Eritrea and Ethiopia. Its mintages were issued and circulated from the reign of King Endubis around AD 270 until it began its decline in the first half of the 7th century where they started using Dinar along with most parts of the Middle East. During the succeeding medieval period, Mogadishu currency, minted by the Sultanate of Mogadishu, was the most widely circulated currency in the eastern and southern parts of the Horn of Africa from the start of the 12th century.
The piastre de commerce was the currency of French Indochina between 1885 and 1954. It was subdivided into 100 cents, each of 2~6 sapèques.
The Philippine real was the currency of the Philippines during the Spanish Colonial Era. Brought over in large quantities by the Manila galleons, eight silver reales made up a silver peso or a dollar. 16 silver real were equal to one gold escudo.
Guijo is a species of plant in the family Dipterocarpaceae. It is a tree found in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo and the Philippines. The name guijo is a Philippine Spanish word derived from the Tagalog gihò. This is also sometimes known as red balan or red balau sharing its name with Shorea balangeran. Other local names include yamban-yamban in Zambales and taralai in Tarlac.
Namayan, also called Sapa, Maysapan, and sometimes Lamayan, was an independent indigenous polity on the banks of the Pasig River in the Philippines. It is believed to have achieved its peak in 1175, and to have gone into decline sometime in the 13th century, although it continued to be inhabited until the arrival of European colonizers in the 1570s.
The use of historical money in Tibet started in ancient times, when Tibet had no coined currency of its own. Bartering was common, gold was a medium of exchange, and shell money and stone beads were used for very small purchases. A few coins from other countries were also occasionally in use.
The history of Philippine money covers currency in use before the Hispanic era with gold Piloncitos and other commodities in circulation, as well as the adoption of the peso during the Hispanic era and afterwards.
The archaeology of the Philippines is the study of past societies in the territory of the modern Republic of the Philippines, an island country in Southeast Asia, through material culture.
By the 10th-century, Java had one of the most complex economies in Southeast Asia. Despite the importance of rice farming which acts as the chief tax income for the Javanese courts, the influx of sea trade in Asia between the 10th and 13th centuries forced a more convenient currency to the Javanese economy. During the late 8th-century, ingots made of gold and silver were introduced. These are the early Nusantara coins.
Bullet money or bullet coins, known in Thai as photduang, were a type of coinage historically used in Siam and its predecessor kingdoms. They were almost exclusively made of silver, in the form of a bar bent into a roundish shape, and stamped with certain marks. Photduang were issued according to the baht system of weights, known among Westerners as the tical, which is the basis of the modern Thai currency. Their earliest common use is from the Sukhothai Kingdom, and they were used by Ayutthaya and its successor kingdoms Thonburi and Rattanakosin up until 27 October 1904, when their use was discontinued in favour of flat coinage.
Barter rings are ring-shaped gold ingots used as currency in the Philippines until the 16th century. These barter rings are bigger than a doughnut in size and are made of nearly pure gold.
![A piloncito with a Baybayin Ma ([?]) character Piloncitos head and tails.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Piloncitos_head_and_tails.jpg/220px-Piloncitos_head_and_tails.jpg)
