Acceptable weight range for late Seleucid Tetradrachm

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That is a great question @AussieCollector I only focus on Seleucid coins through Antiochos VIII Grypos, roughly 311-96 BC, so I can't speak on the coins minted during the last gasps of the empire. The Seleucid kings originally minted at the stated Attic standard of 27.28 grams per tetradrachm. Like most of the Diadochi, that was never the reality, and their tets ranged from the Attic standard down to 17.0 grams. Fast forward 200 years, and the coinage grew much lighter. By Antiochos VIII tets are regularly in the 16.6 to 16.3 gram range, and it isn't uncommon to see them below 16 grams.

The general rule is that as the Seleucid empire gets older the teradrachms grow lighter. By the time of Antiochos III the Great the weight of a tetradrachm is regularly below 17 grams, in the area of 16.9-16.8 grams. A hundred years later the tets of Antiochos VIII are commonly around 16.3 grams or lower (and night).

If nothing else, I would recommend going to CNG or ACsearch and looking up coins by ruler and mint to compare to any you are interested in. It's not a fool-proof method, but with hundreds of examples of common Seleucid tets it can give you a good idea of what to expect.

 

Another thing to consider is soil conditions. Many parts of the Seleucid empire have acidic soil conditions, which can lead to significant soil leeching of metals. I have seen lighter coins fairly often, but many times you can tell they probably entered the ground heavier than they left. I would wager a 13 gram specimen has a lot of that going on.

 

A gram or two down in the last hundred years of the empire is normal, but it varies from king to king and mint to mint. There is no simple answer. Lower than that and you've probably got some outliers, or clipping or leaching as others have mentioned.

If you're strongly interested in Seleucid coinage and its metrology, the latest must-have volumes by Lorber and Hoover are on sale at CNG here.

 

Really depends on the mint and which standard they use. Antioch on the Attic standard for instance in the 130's BCE you can expect an average in the high 16's. War caused the weight to drop regularly after that. Posthumous Philip's can be below 14g.
Sidon and Tyre used the ptolemaic standard which is lighter. You can expect 1.5 gram or more lighter as compared to Antioch in some coins (often with eagle reverses). From those two mints, it is not uncommon to see high 16's to high 12's in the 130's. Generally anything below 12.7 should be questioned as a fourree or other.

 

Debasement is not specifically mentioned. Debasement is not just where debargains are bought. See, for example, from about p59:
Seleucid Coinage and Monetary Policy of the 2nd c. B.C. Reflections on the Monetization of the Seleucid Economy
[article]
Arthur Houghton

 

According to members, this one is a fake, though I've not been able to find it in fake reports. Maybe a fourrée, really don't know, but I still like it:

10.881 g, 28 mm
Ob.: Diademed head of Antiochos I to r.
Rev.: BAΣIΛEΩΣ ANTIOXOY Apollo Delphios seated to l. on omphalos, looking along arrow held in r. hand and resting l. hand on grounded bow; MHTO monogram in outer l. field, and ΩΛT monogram in outer r. field.

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