Hi there! From time to time, you stumble upon a coin which has a "residual silvering" on its surface...may be if you are lucky, even a full silver coating. But some other times, there is neither silvering, neither any rests of it. Instead, there is an unusual (and often weak) "golden patina" (in lack of a better term). Well, this time I got something like that, a regular Maximinus II Daia follis, but remarkably fully golden. This made me wonder, why does this happens? Is it just a layer of some other material to apply the silvering on correctly or what? Thanks for your help.
Looks too golden almost to be toning. I wonder if someone plated it to pass off as a sollidus in antiquity? Electroplating was known to the ancients. The Parthians invented it with chemical batteries electrically coating objects in silver or gold.
Very interesting coin. Perhaps it is a kind of toning that occurs with the silvering that has survived over the millennia?
I did have a coin with a very silvery, slightly golden toning and this was thought to be a coin that had potentially been re-silvered, perhaps in the Victorian period when it was quite fashionable to do this.
I'm not a chemist so I dont know what causes it, but I have seen many over the years with the same tone, and almost always with late Roman.
Perhaps this is the answer. This coin belonged to an old friend who inherited most of his ancients from his grandfather, a numismatist who helped with the cataloguing of Vittorio Emanuelle III´s coins collection, right in the 19th. century.
I've never come across a follis like this. If it has been plated chances are essentially 100% that it was done in modern times as a coating this thin would have broken up in the ground. Another possibility is that the coin was made from a brassy alloy. It's possible but I think unlikely.
