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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2005988, member: 19463&quot;]Coin collectors play it pretty loosely when they use the term &#039;bronze&#039; or the abbreviation &#039;AE&#039;.&nbsp; They include under that cover copper, brass, bronze, leaded bronze and billon coins with so little silver that you really can&#039;t see it (including the 4.77% antoniniani marked XXI).&nbsp; Some coins were stuck on a pretty tightly controlled alloy while others seem to be made from whatever fell in the pot.&nbsp; In the early empire asses were made of red copper and dupondii were yellow brass (orichalcum).&nbsp; Later the two were harder to differentiate to the point that RIC refuses to tell whether an issue was one denomination rather than the other.&nbsp; Usually the radiate crown marked dupondii but they were not worn by empresses or junior Caesars in earlier periods.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I agree.&nbsp; I have been misusing it for many years now and am troubled by so many people misusing it differently than I.&nbsp; The problem with having 100 words for the same thing is that some people think all of them mean the same thing while others maintain a distinction between a tad, a bit and a smidgen.&nbsp; I have a 5 inch thick dictionary supposedly containing every Latin word used in antiquity.&nbsp; I often wonder how many of their words we have lot completely simply because no text using them survives.&nbsp; The true names of our coins may well be in this category.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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