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A hybrid Roman Republican denarius -- could it possibly be real?
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<p>[QUOTE="kevin McGonigal, post: 4717134, member: 72790"]Donna, my father was a master metallurgist for a Swedish owned ball bearing concern, from shop floor to laboratory. Though I did not follow in his footsteps I have always had an interests in this science and skill. Studying the metallic makeup of everything from ancient swords to flintlock musket barrels is an interest of mine. I would like to recommend a book for you and those similarly inclined, the Metallurgy of Roman Silver Coinage by Kevin Butcher. It is not exactly the typical coffee table book but if one likes facts and figures backed by impeccable research and study, this is your book. Just to cite what I mean. Did you know that even the purest of silver coinage has traces of lead, gold, sometimes even nickel in it? That determining the actual silver content of coinage of silver alloy coins requires that the coin be drilled into its interior for an accurate reading as the surface alloy is different from the interior alloy (for a variety of reasons)? As for your, and others' questions about the plated coins of antiquity, there are any number of questions (and even more answers, all of them imprecise). Just as counterfeiting today can be done in somebody's basement or in the bureau of printing and engraving of some rogue governments, so too plated coins could be made by crooks with the bare basement basics to do so, or by official moneyers of city states and kingdoms (and an empire or two) putting in some unauthorized overtime to supplement their incomes to official coinage of adulterated bullion by governments trying to keep the economy afloat in times of great stress. Some of these plated coins had such thick plating that they show signs of having circulated for quite some time until detected, and probably even then in some dark taverns of an evening or two for some time after their initial unmasking. Other coins had such a flimsy wash applied that they must have been detected almost at once. What that means for us as collectors is that plated coins, the fourees, represent a fascinating part of numismatics all their own. I do not shy away from them and will acquire them for what they are, among other things, showing that the counterfeiting of money is one day older than the minting of money.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="kevin McGonigal, post: 4717134, member: 72790"]Donna, my father was a master metallurgist for a Swedish owned ball bearing concern, from shop floor to laboratory. Though I did not follow in his footsteps I have always had an interests in this science and skill. Studying the metallic makeup of everything from ancient swords to flintlock musket barrels is an interest of mine. I would like to recommend a book for you and those similarly inclined, the Metallurgy of Roman Silver Coinage by Kevin Butcher. It is not exactly the typical coffee table book but if one likes facts and figures backed by impeccable research and study, this is your book. Just to cite what I mean. Did you know that even the purest of silver coinage has traces of lead, gold, sometimes even nickel in it? That determining the actual silver content of coinage of silver alloy coins requires that the coin be drilled into its interior for an accurate reading as the surface alloy is different from the interior alloy (for a variety of reasons)? As for your, and others' questions about the plated coins of antiquity, there are any number of questions (and even more answers, all of them imprecise). Just as counterfeiting today can be done in somebody's basement or in the bureau of printing and engraving of some rogue governments, so too plated coins could be made by crooks with the bare basement basics to do so, or by official moneyers of city states and kingdoms (and an empire or two) putting in some unauthorized overtime to supplement their incomes to official coinage of adulterated bullion by governments trying to keep the economy afloat in times of great stress. Some of these plated coins had such thick plating that they show signs of having circulated for quite some time until detected, and probably even then in some dark taverns of an evening or two for some time after their initial unmasking. Other coins had such a flimsy wash applied that they must have been detected almost at once. What that means for us as collectors is that plated coins, the fourees, represent a fascinating part of numismatics all their own. I do not shy away from them and will acquire them for what they are, among other things, showing that the counterfeiting of money is one day older than the minting of money.[/QUOTE]
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