Clad Coinage is a modern way to mint coins, right? No! Many Roman and Greek coins are clad. Greek being considered the "first." Greeks were also the first to "plate" coins, but some coins were plated by many countries and city-states during the medieval period of minting coins. There is a word for these "plated" coins: fourrees (also spelled fourees, fourres, or foures), and there is a collector base who are looking for them. The "clad" coinage differs from the fourees in the way the coins are minted. The celator produced a "clad" coin by laying out a double-length of silver or gold half the regular thickness. He, then placed the inner core of copper, bronze or (in the case of gold), silver in the center of the double-length precious metal. After reheating the two metals the double-length piece was bent or folded over thus enclosing the inner core. The celator then struck the coin as usual. Some "clad" coins produced were copper, brass, or bronze over iron. Here's a pic courtesy of Doug Smith of a facing head drachm from Larissa, circa 400-344 B.C. To execute this high relief, great care in flan preparation (heating) and forceful striking was required. These same factors tend to hide the telltale seams. Hidden among the scratches on the reverse of this coin are fine traces of a seam including a place at 5 o'clock where the core is exposed. Wear has revealed the core on the tip of the nose and on some edge beads on the obverse. http://dougsmith.ancients.info/4laris.jpg Did you know this? Clinker
another great read CLinker. Its funny/cool to hear they had the power to manipulate things at such a small scale like that. i guess i underestimate them early folks....
Thanks Clinker, I actually did know this one :smile Here is an example of a badly corroded silver clad roman coin I have. I have the details of the coin attribution at home. Best Regards Darryl
This fits the beast catagory in the other thread. It is that badly corroded. When I received the coin it was still caked in an thick layer of encrusted dirt. The dirt ate most of the silver over the hundreds of years. So it's clean now but not much left to look at.
Daggerjon That's the reason for mint and privy marks, though some city-states had their mints create clad coins by decree. Clinker
