"surface tinned in antiquity"

I saw this in a description for a coin i really need: "surface tinned in antiquity".
I'm unclear what this actually means. Any ideas?

 

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Possibly a way of describing a "silvered" coin? The so-called silvering on many Roman issues is mostly an alloy of tin, zinc, and antimony.

 

I agree-- it means plated with a few microns of something silverish in color.

 

https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...oman-coinage/B82EE5A59E51C3B7BD6A213B93902536

Unfortunately the above article is behind a paywall...but here is an abstract:

 

Here's a coin from my collection that demonstrates this silvering:


Severina, AD 270-275
Roman silvered billon antoninianus, 4.18 g, 22.1 mm
Antioch, 5th officina, 6th emission, January - September, 275
Obv: SEVERINA AVG, diademed and draped bust, right
Rev: CONCORDIAE MILITVM, Concordia standing left, holding two ensigns; V in field, left, XII in exergue
Refs: RIC 20; MIR/RIC temp 3196; MIR 47, 383a5; BN 1353-1354.

 

Thanks people ... it’s a very odd thing as this particular coin is an Antinous medallion - which ordinarily would never be silvered let alone tinned.

And yes, I’ve been quiet for a while ... I’ve been in Antarctica but now I’m back in the coin bidding game!

 

Penguins smell very pungent ... it’s a fun fact you learn in Antarctica!

 

Excellent photo, although it reminds me of certain Youtube coin experts and their followers.

 

I was thinking Mr Highrating-Lowprice Zlobin’s YouTube lectures plagiarised mostly from wikipedia.

 

ah, spending quality time wif de pings, kool pic!

 

In Methods of Chemical and Metallurgical Investigation of Anicent Coinage Lawrence Cope writes in the article "Surface-silvered ancient coins" that "... set out to positively whether the coatings were silver or tin.... revealed beyond any measure of doubt that all the coins were coated with silver."

In Metallurgy in Numismatics, volume 3, in the article "Technology of silver-plated coin forgeries," Susan la Niece notes, after discussing other ways to put silver on the surface, that "tinning is a very simple process... [and] is commonly found on coin forgeries ... from the Roman period onwards."

I have, myself, participated in a high-tech study of surface-silvering on some "XI" and "XXI" coins of Tacitus and the tetrarchy and we found the "surface-silvering" actually was good silver.