Hi everyone. I posted this on Forum but with all the site updates there weren't many responses.... I got this coin a few months ago and in hand it looks like electrum. The problem is, this type doesn't exist in any of the references I have or could find online as electrum. It is the same size and weight as an AR tetartemorion but the color of the metal points to electrum. At present it's difficult getting an XRF done (although that may not be conclusive either) but I was hoping another pair of eyes may be able to shed some light on this tiny coin. This is a pretty accurate picture of how it looks in hand, maybe a bit brighter: Forepart of lion left Bird (eagle or owl?) standing left within incuse square. Lydia, uncertain 6th Century BCE Electrum? 4-5mm; 0.21g A similar AR: Ionia. Miletos circa 525-475 BC. Tetartemorion AR 4 mm, 0,23 g And perhaps the bigger brother in electrum (though the reverse incuse punch is different: LYDIA, Uncertain. 6th century BC. EL Hemihekte – Twelfth Stater (7.5mm, 1.18 g). Forepart of lion left / Bird (eagle or owl?) standing left within incuse square. Spier p. 332, 11 (A7/P4) = Traité I 53 = J.P. Six, “Monnaies grecques, inédites et incertaines” in NC 1890, p. 247, 1 (same dies); Triton XVII, lot 324 (same dies); cf. Konuk & Lorber Fig. 20 (hekte, same obv. die and one rev. punch); cf. Triton XIV, lot 318 (same). Near VF. Extremely rare. Thanks in advance
That looks like a normal silver coin to me, not EL at all, and a known tetartemorion type. Note that Sulphur can cause yellowish hue on silver. This is what 'tarnishes' silver:
Jay, These coins are way out of my experience, but your coin looks more silver than gold. Maybe your coin was a bad electrum mix ?
I think you are looking for Lydia which might not be the correct attribution that's why you can't find it. Here are a few similar to yours: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=7853233 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=6885072 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=4471160 It's silver not EL. I don't remember seeing EL coins with crystalized surface. As @Pavlos said silver can turn yellow, so the color you see is some kind of toning.
Thanks guys. Yes I meant to add Mylasa to the description as a mint as those did come up during my search. Thanks for the links. I thought about gold toning but have never seen it so bright. The dealers pic is over exposed but gives an idea of how bright the "gold" is:
Good replies. I have plenty of gold colored silver ancients. It is fairly common. One Alex tet has a completely bright gold reverse.
I do too, but it's always been iridescent gold, never this bright. Well, electrum is out, silver in! A bit disappointing but it is what it is. Thanks everyone.
On your photo you see the layers are not interconnected, the gold would have been homogenously mixed with the silver in liquid form, or formed that way in nature. Here you clearly see silver with this goldish looking layer. Either it is Sulphur as I mentioned before, that is how it looks in your first picture, or somebody tried to plate the silver with a gold layer, probably in modern times then.
It can be, but its really a function of toning. The longer it is in that environment, the darker it will become. Mine came from a flip bought in the 1960's and never removed.
I thought it may have been the silver that crystalized/corroded, leaving the gold intact. Thanks for you help. This is how I have it attributed now: CARIA. Mylasa Forepart of a roaring lion to right, head turned back to left. Bird standing left; pellets to lower left and upper right; all within incuse square. Mylasa, Caria Circa 420-390 BC. AR Tetartemorion 4-5mm; 0.21g SNG Kayhan 940-43 (Caria uncertain); SNG Keckman I 926-7; SNG Tübingen 3001 (Miletos). Now I really want some archaic electrum!
Unless you put your electrum coin in a high concentrated nitric acid solution, that won't happen naturally Just for extra info if you are interested. Corrosion of silver is induced by different causes. It is due to impurities such as copper, which is more chemically susceptible, and when they become excluded they cause 'gaps' in the boundaries between silver atoms. This is what mostly happens first, alloys can 'strengthen' eachother or 'weaken' eachother, in this case the couple of percentage of copper (or more) is weakening the silver. Also, the boundaries of crystalline grains and bounderies are in locally higher energy states, so silver oxide or silverchloride starts to form more easily, revealing the grain boundaries after diffusion or cleaning. This is often wat we call "crystallization", eventhough it is a normal term in numismatics, it is very false in science, since the surface is just revealing what was already there, but people generally do not know that almost all metals are polycrystalline in the first place. Porosity is the same thing but on a larger scale and is mostly not due to impurities but corrosion, such as silver chloride aka horn silver that is formed and then removed. Anyway, back to the point, in modern times, noble metals, or alloys with a high content of noble metals, especially gold, are employed when strong corrosive conditions are needed. For example, alloys containing about 70% gold and 30% silver have been proposed for such purposes which, because of their high gold content posses substantial resistance to corrosion. Therefore an electrum coin is much more chemically resistant than silver and does not have these corrosion issues. Unless it is badly contaminated by Copper / Zinc, than you get the dissolution of the Zn and Cu species again and you get a similar story as silver, but in much less and slower amount though. Sorry if I bored anyone, I have done extensive research in a topic in Metallurgy at a university in the past, so I know a bit too much about it. Back to coins, this is my Archaic EL pieces: Islands off Caria, Kos. EL Forty-eighth Stater, Phokaic standard. Circa 625-600 B.C. Obverse: Crab. Reverse: Incuse square. Reference: Stefanaki Series I, unlisted denomination; HN Online –; cf. HGC 6, 1295 (1/96th stater). 0.34g
Here is one of mine... Ionia Miletos AR Tetartemorion 5.6mm 0.21g Roaring Lion Hd - Bird Klein 430 SNG Kay 941
