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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Finn235, post: 3804746, member: 98035&quot;]A few points about these coins:</p><p><br /></p><p>1) Dealers - especially those who mostly deal with overpriced 19th century US coins - will charge all sorts of crazy prices for common ancient coins. Even slabbed and certified AU, that coin is worth maybe $20-30.</p><p><br /></p><p>2) Due to the conditions of the mint and the general chaos of the time, a pristine (fully struck, centered, and engraved in good style) antonianus of Tetricus I would be worth a substantial premium to a dedicated collector. Mine is nowhere close, but I only paid like $5 for it.</p><p><br /></p><p>3) Billon is technically any silver alloy where the silver content is under 50%, but the silver is there deliberately. All ancient bronze coins are going to have traces of all sorts of metals in them, but the Romans were very good at controlling the metallurgy of their coins. In this period of time, the mint would &quot;surface enrich&quot; the coins, i.e. soak them in acid to dissolve out some of the copper to make the coin *look* silver.</p><p><br /></p><p>For example, this Gallienus is a billon coin of less than 30% fine, but it looks bright and flashy</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1015386[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>During the early 270s the silver content dipped so low (under 3%) that it was almost impossible to maintain the illusion of silver. Aurelian standardized the antoninianus at 4.76% fine (20:1 silver to copper, indicated by XXI or KA on the coin) - these can look more presentably silvered:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1015388[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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