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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 4132265, member: 19463&quot;]This is a completely different thing from what is being discussed on this thread.&nbsp; The coin is a contemporary fake of a silver denarius of Severus Alexander that had a copper core wrapped in a thin skin of relatively good silver.&nbsp; These are termed &#039;fourree&#039;. In this thread, we have seen coins with very little silver in the mix. Billon is a silver copper mix that barely looks gray when fresh and often tones brownish like copper.&nbsp; Billon coins with so little silver that they could not look at all gray were sometimes washed at the mint to to remind people tat the alloy did include a little silver but inflation had made it necessary to include that silver in a carrier of copper. The coins of Victorinus were not fakes but just the way the genuine mint made coins at that period.&nbsp; The other choices might have been making very tiny coins of better metal (too easy to lose) or making coins with no silver and asking people to trust the government for the difference the way we do today with our copper nickel quarters.&nbsp; The Roman economy was not yet quite ready for an admittedly <i>fiat</i> currency.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Below is another fourree of Severus Alexander with slightly more of the silver skin remaining.&nbsp; From the style, we can tell that the dies were not made in the official mint.&nbsp; These were not made to fool collectors but were spent on the economy of their day along with good coins until someone discovered their hidden secret and got stuck with the trash.&nbsp; Today, some collectors gather these as a sub-hobby because they are &#039;ancient&#039; coins that unofficially circulated in their day.&nbsp; Most refuse them as counterfeits.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1069718[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Anyone wanting to see more on fourrees is invited to visit my four pages on the subject.</p><p><a href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/fourree.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/fourree.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/fourree.html</a></p><p>Click on the links at the bottom of that first page to see the more specialized groups.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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