You have to pay taxes on barter deals, and those tend to involve items with no face value at all.
It wasn't a cash deal, it was a barter deal. The fact that the barter goods also have a face value doesn't change it unless the person receiving those goods was willing to accept other currency. It comes down to the meeting of minds. What is the deal worth to those involved?
If I have a penny jar and the pennies are worth more than face value (either as scrap metal or because they are worth something to coin collectors) and I trade that jar of pennies to somebody based on that higher value, that's barter. The reason it usually doesn't become a tax issue is that the metal or numismatic value of the penny jar is usually not large enough to worry about.