For some time after the discovery of gold in California, gold dust was roughly measured out on the thumb-nail.

In shipments of gold to-day by bankers to settle international balances, metal may be in the form of bars that bear the mark of some well-known banking house.
In all of the cases of this kind the gold is money in fact, but not by virtue of any act of government.

The metal is simply a valuable good, the receiver of which values it according to its weight and fineness.
This is true even when the government mint, for a small charge, tests and stamps the bars at the request of citizens.
Very early it became the practice of governments to shape and stamp pieces of metal to be used as money, so as to indicate their weight and fineness.

The act of shaping and marking metal for this purpose is called coinage.[5] The coinage by government had notable advantages in giving to the monetary units uniformity of size, fineness, and value, with the stamp that was readily recognized.

But in its simplest form coinage in no way changed the value of the money, and any other mark equally plain put upon it would have served equally well, if only it had carried with it equal assurance of the quality and weight of the metal.
9.