Is this some kind of electro plating? It seems very precise in only hitting the fields. I have not seen anything like this before on a coin. I imagine if its some kind of gold electroplating it was done for jewlery purposes.
The ususal method used for plating copper printed circuit boards involves applying a chemical "resist" substance to the area that is to be plated, then placing the board in an acidic solution to etch away the unwanted copper. After cleaning, the stripped board can be plated with silver, gold, or some other conductive material. Less frequently, resist is applied to the area that isn't to be plated, before electroplating the board. I suspect that that technique was used on your silver coin by carefully applying a resist to the high spots, electroplating it, and then removing the resist. For example, in the high school chem lab a student could have: Coated it with wax Lightly buffed it, removing the wax from the raised areas, but leaving it in the fields Coated the coin with a resist substance having a higher melting point than wax Gently heated it enough to melt off the wax and leave the resist in place Electroplated the coin with gold Removed the resist, resulting in gold-plated fields and the original coin silver high points Maybe that's what happened, maybe not, but that is a way it could have occurred.
Thanks for the link but I meant the addition of the gold as the other reply got into. This is an all silver coin and it struck me odd to see this one with golden fields.
