I have a number of Swiss coins made of Billon, but I don't know what that is. Could someone enlighten me? JonySky
JonySky,billon is an alloy containing 10% silver & 90% copper.It has an extremely dull-grey colour.Quite a few of the Swiss Cantons issued billon coins.The most well-known ones are the coins of Geneva. Aidan.
Agreed, except that billon can be different from the 90-10 mix. As far as I know (but that may be specific to German terminology), billon is an alloy with less than 50 percent silver. The rest is usually copper but could also contain zinc for example. The federal Swiss 5, 10, and 20 centimes/rappen coins issued shortly after 1850 contain mostly copper but also zinc and nickel. The silver content varies from Ag050 (5 ct/rp) to Ag100 (10 ct/rp) to Ag150 (20 ct/rp). That is, between 5 and 15 percent. Christian
I have a 1 Batz from Neuchetal (I probably didn't spell that right) Canton. It is also billon. I think Christain is right - I think billon is just a term for dirty silver...
