Your Genesis item. What got u hooked?

Very nice, but what is late Roman silver? I thought the so called silver coins of the late Roman Empire have only enough silver to amount to a few dust grains of silver.

 

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Where did you get that??

 

Didn't they start to bathe coins with only a few microns thin layer of silver by the 4rth century? Even by the mid 200's the silver coins had fallen to under 50% silver, and from there it rapidly declined to basically a silver bath to apply a thin layer that wore away after a week or two of circulation.

 

Not really. While it is true that Silver coinage never reached the levels of the Early Roman Empire, silver coinage was very common. You do have a point though, most silver coins in Late antiquity are thinner and smaller than coins found in Republican Rome. This is due to the empire being on a gold standard and the lack of new sources of Silver by the mid 4th century( Hispania and Dacia had been milked dry by the 300's)

 

@Sallent Here are some of my late Roman Silvers.
None of them weigh over 2.3 grams

Constantius II AR Siliqua



Julian II AR Siliqua


Valens AR Siliqua



Valentinian I AR Siliqua.

 

Nice stories everyone

Long before I got the Commodus sestertius recently shown on another thread, my godmother gifted me when I was about 5 with a 5 francs silver coin, minted my year of birth. As far as I can remember, I've hoarded then collected coins ever since.


REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE, semeuse allant à gauche
LIBERTE . EGALITE . FRATERNITE, entre une corne d'abondance et une chouette 5 FRANCS en deux lignes. En dessous un bouquet de branches de chêne et d'olivier, un épi de plé. 1960 à l'exergue
Tranche en relief ** LIBERTE * EGALITE * FRATERNITE
11,97 gr
Ref : Le Franc 10 # 340/4

Q

 

My father had a cigar box filled with odds and ends that he had saved from his years in the restaurant business. There were large cents, two $21/2 gold liberties made into earrings and the coin that started the obsession; an 1889 CC silver dollar in VF with graffiti carved on her cheek.
The initials "JJ" were clearly visible and my father told me that they stood for Jesse James. Even though J.J. died in 1882, I bought into it.

 

I started with rocks, bottle caps...just about everything I could find in quantity as a child. My first real collection was Wacky Packages and then Bachman mini planes. Coins soon followed. I think I've still got my planes in storage someplace. The ME-109 was the unicorn that took me from hobby shop to hobby shop trying to find.

 

I had a great aunt pass away when I was younger. My parents found some silver and put it away to give to us kids when we were older. I started getting interested in coins and my Dad pulled out some of the silver and gave it to me. I was locked in from then on.

 

The point is that the Romans expected their coins to have a proper amount of precious metal in the coin. To get smaller denominations for daily use, they mixed a very small amount of silver in the alloy and washed the coin with silver to remind people it was there. In the early Empire, this was accomplished by bronze coins. Solid silver coins provided a mid level denomination (or two depending on date) and gold was used for the high denominations. The smaller silver washed coins might be worth a small fraction of the gold coin (as little as 1/7200? - we do not have a firm set of ratios for every period) and poor people never would have touched a gold or full silver coin. Most surviving silvered coins have lost their silver. Some later issues were not silvered and contained no silver. There are many thousands of the silver washed coins surviving for every full silver one and many types compared to a very small variety of silver. Here on CT, our member Magnus Maximus is resident silver collector. I assume, judging from his posts, he has more of them than the rest of us combined.
Samples:
Silver washed AE3 (Constantine I):


Solid silver siliqua (Constantius II)


Gold solidus (Theodosius II)

 

Embarrassingly typical, but a tribute penny got me hooked.

This one is the one with the inverted spear, legs of chair ornate, triple line below, feet on footstool.
RIC-28, BMCRE-45

 

Like that Tribute penny RC. Good detail on the chair legs.