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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Plumbata, post: 3242837, member: 96864&quot;]Curiosity about the Copper-Nickel Bactrian coinage led me to find this 1957 article &quot;Nickel in Ancient Bronzes&quot; at <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/500603" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/500603" rel="nofollow">https://www.jstor.org/stable/500603</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Among other things they analyzed 5 Cu-Ni Bactrians and found nickel at between 8.6-13.8%, not quite like our modern 25% Nickel clad coinage in the USA but more like our first &quot;Flying-Eagle&quot; small Cents at 12% Nickel, though the other metals in the Bactrian alloy may have had a whitening effect too. They analyzed the composition of some Bactrian coins and relative proportions of minor metal constituents in the alloy to high-nickel Chinese &quot;Paitung-White Copper&quot; and determined that the the origin the the Bactrian coins was from the same Nickel-Copper Sulfide ores; the &quot;Hweili deposits of Sikang Province, China.&quot; </p><p>[ATTACH]849247[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]849248[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]849249[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>That province no longer exists: &quot;In 1950, following the defeat of the Kuomintang by the Communists in the Chinese Civil War, Xikang was split along the Yangtze into Sikang to the east and a separate Chamdo Territory to the west. Chamdo was merged into Tibet Autonomous Region in 1965. The rest of Sikang was merged into Sichuan in 1955.&quot;</p><p>[ATTACH=full]849246[/ATTACH] </p><p>It seems that the raw metal produced from the pure ore was marginally more nickel-rich, so I guess the metal was extended to a degree with presumably cheaper copper prior to the striking of the coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>The article is quite interesting if you&#039;re into ancient metallurgy, and like the Roman Copper-Zinc Orichalcum shows that the ancients didn&#039;t need to be able to isolate and purify an elemental metal to be able to make use of it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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