Ever since my pocket piece (a cull Morgan dollar) left me for a hotel maid, I had the idea of replacing it with a large Roman AE. But since I run on unleaded I never pulled the trigger, having read that the Romans sometimes used leaded bronze after the 2nd century. My understanding is lead on hands isn't dangerous as long as you keep them away from your face and food. Since I incessantly fiddle with my pocket piece -- out of the pocket(!) -- I need a lead-free one to avoid becoming the topic of an after-school special. When I came into some leftover lead test swabs I thought, here's my chance. The 3M lead test swabs don't tell you exactly how much lead is present, but there is a relative gradation between pink (enough lead to be considered "dangerous") to maroon ("call the hazmat team"). My test candidate was a late 3rd century bronze. Pink. So they worked. They also stained the coin, so important lesson there. I had lots of damaged 1st and 2nd century candidates, so I kept testing until I ran out of swabs (they're designed to be single-positive, but you can get multiple uses out of each swab by cracking them open and applying the fluid directly as long as you do it quickly.) Here's the results: every As, Dupondius, and Sestertius I tried contained at least a pink level of lead, and virtually all quickly turned dark maroon. Ironically, the 3rd century test piece fell in the lower lead group. My takeaways were: 1) no Roman bronze pocket piece, 2) a red stain on a cull doesn't improve its appearance, and 3) a reminder to wash hands after touching bronze coins.
Why an ancient as a pocket piece? There are far less ancient coins than almost any date of US coins. Seems a shame to waste an ancient that way.
All the candidates were purpose-bought damaged culls. I liked the idea of giving one a new lease on life as a coin.
Well, considering that I used to roll mercury around in my hand and fold and tear random pieces of lead metal that my dear ol' dad left laying around his cool construction projects, I'm not too worried that'll I'll get sick from a 2000 year old AE coin (ummm, although I did have cancer when I was in my 30's ... hmmm?) regardless, I would love to have a pocket-piece, or even better => a golf ball marker that was one of my cool ol' AE bronze babies!! (great idea) => oooow, I know just the piece that would be fricken "perfect"
Beauty! I remember doing that with the mercury they gave us to play with in chem class. Lots of us walked around all day with mercury coated rings. Good times.
I have a page that shows the alloy composition, with lead percentages, of some Constantinian bronzes -- http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/metallurgy/ I don't believe that there is actually anything to be concerned about though, short of ingestion...so do not eat LRB's
Great page. Did you do that with an XRF gun? The source I read said pb could reach 33%, now I'm wondering how accurate that is based on this data.
I've been handling bullets and fishing weights my entire life and, uh...wait, what were we talking about?
Yeah, when I fish and shoot, it is like the Ancient Greeks storing their coins between their cheek and gum...
