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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 3242770, member: 19463&quot;]There is an unfortunate tendency for modern Europeans to take credit for inventing things that were known to some ancient people and not remembered in a continuous string down to their time.&nbsp; The best known example of this is discovery of America by Christopher Columbus who may not have known about Vikings and did not recognize the people he saw when he got there as having beaten him to the claim.&nbsp; They were, after all, not citizens of a country he recognized as part of the civilized world.&nbsp; Of course if he thought he was in India, even he did not claim to be the discoverer of the New World but just a new way of getting there.&nbsp; There is no evidence that the Baktrians ever isolated nickel as an element but just that they had coins with 75% copper and 25% nickel.&nbsp; Did they find that alloy?&nbsp; Did they process it from a meteorite (there should be iron in them if so).&nbsp; Did they trade for the material for these few coins from a third party whose knowledge of the matter is even more of a mystery than than the coins themselves?&nbsp; We probably will never know.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>What I find interesting is how such a minor metal in the history of coinage has become so dominant even though most examples are an alloy.&nbsp; Considering how well 1938 Jefferson nickels have held up after so many years compared to the one cent copper/zinc abominations, it is obvious that the metal is not a bad choice for the use.&nbsp; They do not, however, bury well in the earth for long periods as my examples illustrated.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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