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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;RichardT, post: 7752829, member: 100005&quot;]I kind of doubt if this denarius has been clipped.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you are really interested in this general topic (ancient Roman denarii production, purity etc), I would strongly recommend reading this book:</p><p><br /></p><p><i>The Metallurgy of Roman Silver Coinage: From the Reform of Nero to the Reform of Trajan</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p>It answers many of the questions raised in this thread. Like how denarii were prepared and struck, discussed in Part I, 6 - Metallography and the production of denarius blanks (pp 130-147).</p><p><br /></p><p>The ancients also commonly struck debased silver coins which look like pure silver to the eye. The book explains the process by which the ancients did that (via the deliberate creation of a silver enriched surface). This while the core of the coin has lower silver purity. You can see from the attached table that by the time of Trajan the silver purity was about 80%. Hadrian succeeded Trajan, so the purity should be close. Certainly not higher, at least.</p><p><br /></p><p>Also, the book also has a section explaining that such debased silver coins that look seemingly fine on the surface can actually have had their non-silver content leached out. The weight of such coins will be much lower than expected, and the weight will vary greatly even between two coins of the same issue. But this doesn&#039;t mean the coins were clipped. It&#039;s simply that the copper or other base metals are gone while the silver remains.</p><p><br /></p><p>Your coin IS light for the issue. I suspect it&#039;s because:</p><p><br /></p><p>1. The coin&#039;s had it&#039;s copper or base metals leached out, or</p><p>2. The coin was originally struck at such a low weight, or</p><p>3. The coin is clipped.</p><p><br /></p><p>I doubt if the coin was clipped though, because Hadrian&#039;s denarii were not pure silver to begin with. If you were clipping coins, I would think you would want pure silver. Would you want to clip metal which you had to refine again yourself?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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