I think it would be an interesting idea to talk about silver fineness in coinage. I see so many different silver content coins, from 1000 (not 999.9, but 1,000, absolutely pure silver?), .958, .625, .333, .100, etc. Let's post pictures of coins with various silver content, see how many different silver content type coins we can find. Use your own pictures, or if you know of a particular coin with a certain purity, but you don't own it, use an online image, just make sure to write where you got it. Also, ancient and medieval coin collectors could comment on how fineness evolved over time. Just curious, what purity silver was used in different ancient coins? Post your thoughts & images.
Here's a weird fineness of .8924 of one of my Bust halves , in 1837 they started using .900 fine in the reeded edge half dollars and in most all US emissions .
The Romans debased their silver currency but we don't even use copper, anymore. All we need (the Fed) to do to debase our currency is give banks money so they loan more and make more profit and invest all your savings for profit, as well :/ Not that I think it's gotten to any extreme point yet. We want *some* inflation (~2%)
I have no idea what the fineness may have been in ancients. But the idea, the reason, for the various levels of fineness, that hasn't changed since they first started making coins. It was to allow the authority (the minter) to make money on the deal. It is all based on units of measurement. Again, I have no idea what the unit of measurement was called in ancient times, but for the last thousand years give or take a century or two the unit of measurement for silver was the marc. And the degree of fineness for the coins was determined by the minting authority dictating how many coins of a given denomination could be made from 1 marc of silver. That is how, and why, there are so many different and seemingly odd degrees of fineness like .958 or .8924, just as examples. So what is a marc, how much silver does a marc contain ? That depends on two things: the time period you are talking about, and the country or even area you are talking about. Here is a short list of the various weights, in grams, used until the 1800s - Cologne = 2 marc = 467.620 grams French = 2 marc = 489.506 Aachen = 32 loth = 467.040 Amsterdam troy = 2 mark = 492.168 Antwerp = 2 mark = 468.800 Hamburg = 512 pennyweight = 484.690 Lisbon = 2 marcas = 459.100 Lucerne = medical pound = 357.950 Munich = 560.000 Naples = 12 ounces = 320.759 Stockholm = 425.34 Now as you can see there is a lot of difference depending on where you were. And those differences were of course one of, if not the, primary hindrance to trade. Which is of course the reason for the advent of trade coins, but that's a different story. When silver coins (gold too for that matter) were issued their face value was based on their actual weight in pure silver. In other words if a coin weighed 25 grams then its face value was equal to that of 25 grams of pure silver. But the manufacture of coins cost money, the materials themselves, the workmen minting the coins, and the equipment used, all cost money. So the minting authority would reduce the fineness of the silver used in the coins to a level where there would be enough profit to pay for everything and put some profit in the treasury. Instead of a silver coin containing 25 grams of pure silver if the fineness was 90% it would instead contain 22.5 grams of pure silver. But when used in commerce its value was still that of 25 grams. Now the OP mentioned some coins having a fineness of 1.000, pure silver, or pure gold for that matter. And yes, at times that was done. But it was done for various reasons at various times. Among those reasons were the status afforded to the issuing authority. Other times such coins were only produced as gifts to persons of note, and at other times they were produced to facilitate trade with other countries because the higher the degree of fineness the easier it was for those coins to be more widely accepted for payment of goods. In other words, just like today, the reputation of the issuing authority mattered. And the higher the degree of fineness, and its consistency, the better reputation you had. As to how fineness evolved, that was often determined by what else was going in or around the country issuing the coins. When times were good, fineness went up. When times were bad fineness went down. For example, if there was a war, the issuing authority (the King) had to pay for that war. To do that he dropped the degree of fineness used in his coins to put more money into the treasury to do so. If there was peace and trade was good, then fineness was increased for an increase in trade itself allowed the the King to put more money in the treasury. And to keep things that way, to keep the people happy in other words, an increase in fineness did that. So fineness changing was kind of arbitrary depending on other circumstances. That includes greed. For if the King was a bad King and all he wanted was money in his pockets then he took it from his people by decreasing the fineness. Do that for long enough and the King might end up not living so long, or at least staying in power.
