Modern coin idea

[pavka]

Here I would incidentally recommend to move the ROMA AUSTRALIANA (abbreviated ROMA.AVST. in the exergue (lower part of the reverse, underneath the gate), leaving CONCORDIA AVG around. That would, in my opinion, make it look more like a Roman coin.

Good idea. However, I wanted to have the value of the coin there and it may become a bit crowded. I am getting these designs from a "challenge coin" company in the US. They have now closed for the holidays, so I'll be able to talk to them again in January :-(

This also party answers Jennifer's question - these will be made as tokens, or "challenge coins" (I believe this is a US-only phenomenon), and as such will be machine-made and relatively cheap. Thanks for the link to Antiqua Nova, but they are way too expensive... This particular coin is for 10 sestertii, which I've (rather arbitrarily) decided will be 1/10th of a denarius. I know the Romans didn't have decimal currency, but decimal currency is all the rage now so I thought I'd mix "modern" with "ancient" in this respect at least. I am currently waiting for a design featuring the gate of Arbeia and the goddess Spes, which will be made by a Roman re-enactor and the coins hand-made by another one. Consequently, that coin will be much more expensive, and will have a face value of 1 denarius.

Re Jennifer' second question:
- "exchange your dollars at the gate, spend them on merchants row" - that will be all initially, until a real town with a real economy arises.
- "people make their livings buying and selling with them instead of dollars" - hopefully, it will reach this stage at some point. Then, yes, we'll have a legal issue. On the one hand, private money seems to be prohibited in Australia. On the other hand, the penalty is $100 which we can live with. On the third hand, it can be argued that these are tokens (not much different in idea from the tokens used by, for example, the Sydney monorail); also, they will have a limited distribution and usage in a town, which town will not be "open to the public" but will in fact (and, I guess, legally) be a gated members-only community. Anyway, this is somewhere in the not very near future :-(

[damianlz]

Pavel im for this 100%, put me down for some regardless of the design.

I'd classify them as Tokens for goods, in the same way a carnival and those arcade stores use them. I have been to an SCA gig here in Australia where they have used their own form of tokens for currency between vendors and participents, they tend to look into the legality of such things so I think it would be fine