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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Valentinian, post: 4107051, member: 44316&quot;]At Academia.edu you can download Anthony Kropff&#039;s &quot;A new English Translation of the Price Edit of Diocletianus.&quot; 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&#039;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.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>If &quot;XXI&quot; 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 &quot;XCVI&quot; on them for 96 to the pound.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Yes. Assuming the &quot;41&quot; 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?), &quot;barbarians&quot; being paid off, and other causes of a silver shortage which would drive up the price.</p><p><br /></p><p>For me, a 25-cent piece is fiduciary money. I don&#039;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&#039;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.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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