Token coinage systems

Any coin collection will clearly show that by far the most common systems for coinage are indeed based on token values. Governments decree that a given coin, worth in metallic terms substantially less than its monetary face value, constitutes a legal payment of a debt. To support this construct it has been necessary to forbid independent manufacture of coins, and to assist enforcement by making the technology of coin production relatively difficult to copy.

Deliberately overvalued coins tend to stay in circulation precisely because they have no intrinsic metallic value, which is a material advantage to the state, and even though in such systems silver and gold coins are occasionally allowed to circulate in parallel and in modest numbers their circulation generally declines (Gresham's Law again).