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Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775-1821 | 
 enlarge | Author: George Anthony Selgin
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Category: Book
List Price: $40.00
Buy New: $32.00
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New (7) from $32.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 38850
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 390
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4
ISBN: 0472116312
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.4043094109033
EAN: 9780472116317
ASIN: 0472116312
Publication Date: July 14, 2008
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Product Description
Good Money tells the fascinating story of British manufacturers' challenge to the Crown's monopoly on coinage. In the 1780s, when the Industrial Revolution was gathering momentum, the Royal Mint failed to produce enough small-denomination coinage for factory owners to pay their workers. As the currency shortage threatened to derail industrial progress, manufacturers began to mint custom-made coins, called "tradesman's tokens." Rapidly gaining wide acceptance, these tokens served as the nation's most popular currency for wages and retail sales until 1821, when the Crown outlawed all moneys except its own. Economist George Selgin presents a lively tale of enterprising manufacturers, technological innovations, alternative currencies, and struggles over the right to coin legal money. George Selgin is Professor of Economics in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, California (www.independent.org).
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| Customer Reviews:
Good Money; Great Storytelling September 4, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The scene: Birmingham, England, in the steamy, sooty grip of the Industrial Revolution. George Selgin tells the "riveting" tale of a group of eccentric entrepreneurs who take on not only each other, but the Royal Mint and the British Crown in their bids to supply a burgeoning working class with desperately needed copper and silver coins. The result: a yarn as colorfully amusing as one of Dickens' more ambitious novels, but entirely true, and one that offers up an economics lesson to boot: namely, that good money really does drive out bad--that is, as long as governments stay out of it (as soon as they don't Gersham's Law kicks in). If you love a great story, if you adore larger-than-life characters, if you put a premium on fine prose, do yourself a favor and buy Good Money. It will be well worth yours.
A Challenge to Central Bankers August 4, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Despite it's seemingly specialized, historical subject, Good Money is really both very topical and very important. The story it tells--of private coinage during the Industrial Revolution--directly challenges the conventional wisdom that's at the foundation of all modern monetary systems, namely, the belief that only government's are fit to supply coins and paper money. Selgin shows that this was far from being the case in 18th-century England. There the government proved itself perfectly unfit to coin money, until private mints showed it how to do its job right! The story of how they designed the world's first successful industrial-scale coinage system, and of how the government ultimately put them out of business, is absolutely spellbinding! No one who reads it can ever look at a central bank or government-run mint without wondering how much better off the world might have been without it!
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