Addendum: As soon as I posted this question, I looked back at the book and noticed the definition of credit money that “these claims must not be both payable on demand and absolutely secure” or there “would be no difference between their value and that of the sum of money to which they referred.”
This may answer my question (which means I posted this about 5 minutes too early), in that I now assume that the transactions which changed goods for tobacco on the spot were taking place in commodity money, and the actual presence of the coin was not necessarily.
If there is anything I’m still missing or getting wrong, I would love clarification, but Mises appears to have answered my question better than I realized on the first read through (go figure).
