Workers stumble upon 1,300 pounds of ancient coins.

At Academia.edu you can download Anthony Kropff's "A new English Translation of the Price Edit of Diocletianus." It has one pound of silver at 6000 [p. 72] and 1 pound of copper at 75 [p. 38]. That is only 80 to 1, not the 100 to 1 I mentioned and have read elsewhere. So, I'll go with 80 to 1. That makes little difference to my point that a small amount of silver makes a big difference in the intrinsic value of low-silver ancient coins.

If "XXI" has the meaning I think it does, 20 parts silver to one part copper, then some of the coins themselves give their alloy. About the time of the Edict (301) some argentei had "XCVI" on them for 96 to the pound.

In the early empire brass (orichalcum), which looks a bit like gold, was worth more than copper in the ratio 8 to 5. Books say that in ancient times (before patina formed) the color distinguished asses (copper) from dupondii (brass) for those issues of dupondii that were not radiate.

Frequent the US coin forum and you will see some collectors keep track of the dates when US coins were good silver, 40% silver, or little silver and seek out the better ones. It seems to me likely that at least some ancient people paid close attention to alloy.

Yes. Assuming the "41" ratio is correct, increasing to 80 would be doubling. How can that be explained? Well, we know that good-silver coins had long disappeared prior to the introduction of the argenteus (which seems to not have been issued in large numbers). It seems silver was in short supply. This has probably been studied and I am not on top of the literature. If someone put the time into a literature search, I could imagine they might find articles considering mines being less productive, silver being hoarded (in pagan temples?), "barbarians" being paid off, and other causes of a silver shortage which would drive up the price.

For me, a 25-cent piece is fiduciary money. I don't care whether the metal is worth 25 cents. But, it was a big deal in the 20th century when that happened. Not that much before my time citizens expected a silver dollar to have a dollar's worth of silver in it. If modern people can care, I bet the ancients did too. We might not know the intrinsic values of their coins, but I bet many ancient people did.

 

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Thanks for that excellent reply. One of the reasons I asked those questions is because I am researching a topic I hope to post on this site in another day or two about the point when the token bronze coinage increased so much in value over the increasingly debased silver that the old token sestertii became, coin for coin, more valuable than the silver double denarii and the people realized it. From the metrology of the coins in circulation then I am reaching the conclusion it was about 260 AD.

 

Pretty cool

 

We might want remember that they considered it one part silver added to 20 parts alloy so the coins were 1/21st or 4.77% silver. Today we think of alloys using the total weight or one part in twenty (5%). If you are correct allowing 1% for the wash, your tested coin actually seemed too good for the standard. I know they did not pay that much attention to every individual coin but people of that day had no reason not to trust the money (even if that were an option). I suspect not accepting Diocletian's coin at full face value would be the same as not selling at the edict price.
I am surprised that so few of the early folles included the XXI mark.

Alexandria


Siscia (Galerius)