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Message:: [QUOTE="Sallent, post: 3184651, member: 76194"]I believe these coins were minted for Caesar's troops by military mints in northern Italy, and coins for soldiers would be minted using the best silver possible. You don't want to short-change the people behind you with pointy swords (that doesn't usually end well). It is very rare for mints to use lower quality silver during this time period (with all the soldiers that were expecting to be paid in good silver). Very few instances of that are documented, such as in the case of the Eid Mar denarius (Brutus was a cheapskate as well as a traitor). Hence why so many of his surviving denarius have corrosion on them. But for Caesar's denarii, the man definitely liked to use good silver (95% plus silver).That's why I believe yous was probably an ancient forgery with thin silver plating. The plating didn't survive, and from the looks of the pitting due to bronze corrosion while burried, it's a miracle the core of your coin survived at all. I'm not saying, however, that your coin is worthless or numismatically unimportant. That is obviously not the case. I think you'll find a very healthy collectors market for ancient forgeries. After all, fake coins were a huge problem in ancient Rome, so surviving fakes are part of Roman numismatics history, and widely studied and collected.[/QUOTE]