Coins and Coining. The objects used in trade, buying and selling, plus the process of producing struck pieces in a press with dies imparting a design on both of two sides. Coins, made since 640 B.C., touch the daily life of every person on earth involved in commerce since that time. Even with substitutes for coins – paper money, checks, credit cards, or even electronic transfer of payments – the requirement for coins is so enmeshed with every transaction that their need continues into the third millennium.

(MUCH MORE TO COME – LONGEST ARTICLE IN ENCYCLOPEDIA.