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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;acanthite, post: 689859, member: 6647&quot;]Nice coin!</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I first saw one of these coins several months ago and was quite fascinated at the idea that nickel was isolated and used in a coin at such an early date. As mentioned above, nickel was not easy to extract or refine to relatively pure form by ancient methods (unlike gold or silver), thus the theory of meteorites. Most nickel deposits as encountered near the earth&#039;s surface have an upper level of enrichment of about 3% of the pure metal. Not to say that somewhere in Baktria there may have been some unusually enriched source, which has not been rediscovered since ancient times.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I don&#039;t know who is thinking that, but there is only one large nickel deposit (out of several that exist throughout the world) thought to have such an origin, that being the Sudbury Igneous Complex in Ontario. The earth&#039;s core could be more than 10% nickel, which is a fair bit of metal. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I really don&#039;t have a good idea of how these coins came about, I have trouble with ideas about super-enriched sources. The problem with meteorites is that relatively few contain appreciable amounts of nickel, and those iron-nickel types are mostly iron.&nbsp; And collecting more than one Fe-Ni meteorite is rather difficult, unless you are in Antarctica. Therefore it seems that somehow a metallurgical refining process would have to be responsible (for which we do not have historical evidence), as would obviously be necessary if the source were a terrestrial nickel deposit.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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