Reply to Thread

Message:: [QUOTE="Parthicus, post: 13867765, member: 81887"]My immediate subjective impression is that the Parthians started debasing their tetradrachms pretty early on, and they become billon before too long.  Searching my library, I have the classic volume "Chemical Composition of Parthian Coins" by Earle R. Caley (ANS Numismatic Notes and Monographs #129), published in 1955.  Most of the text deals with the drachms and with various technical issues involved in determining fineness with 1955 technology (no fancy XRF),  But in Table XX it does list a tetradrachm of Phraates IV as having a silver fineness of 522 (52.2% silver).  This is basically the same as your reading of 52% silver using XRF, so this seems pretty reasonable.  So, technically not billon (<50% silver) yet, but pretty close.  Parthian tets do soon turn into billon, and stay that way for the rest of the series, but maintained just enough silver to not look coppery until the end of the empire, unlike the case of Elymais, where both tetradrachms and drachms turn from decent silver to billon to bronze, all within the reign of Kamnaskires V.[/QUOTE]