Ancient Coins: Silvered Coins
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.ค. 2022
- Articles discussed in this video:
"Experimental Investigation of silvering in Late Roman Coinage":
www.researchgate.net/publicat...
"Silver Plating technology of the late 3rd century Roman Coinage":
www.hmsjournal.org/index.php/...
The Romans debased their coinage to such extremes that by the end of the third century AD, the mighty denarius was nothing but a small copper coin. Seeking to re-establish the trust on its coinage and give its debased coinage an image of value, the mints started producing silvered coins.
How did they do it? How did the Romans produce millions of silvered coins with such quality? This is what we are discussing in today´s video.
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---- music credit ----
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Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License
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Thanks for the "Artemis Collection" for the picture of the Fouree Hadrian denarius to illustrate plated coins,
AWESOME. More technical ancient numismatics please.
It was a fun topic to make, I'll try doing more!
I was able to speak with Constantina Vlachou last month when at a workshop in Seville. She showed the results from an experimental archaeology amalgam plated coin experiment. The use of olive oil to eliminate the mercury that the Byzantines used finally showed the results needed. Quite fascinating. There was an small discussion at the workshop regarding the methods, but it seemed that amalgam plating was the way to go
Fascinating!
I am not aware that the Byzantines ever silvered thier coins. Which ones please?
@@williamkinkade2538 If I'm being frank William, I didn't ask. Perhaps the silver pieces before the Anasthasian reform
I actually find it fun to look up which mint versions of mid-late 3rd century emperor's have the best silver content and weight for the era . Almost always it's a rich eastern mint
Excellent explanation Leo, you have updated my knowledge on a key subject. I will check those papers and update on the current discussion about this issue. Chemical tests could no doubt help in determining this issue. In any case, I suggest that the process (I mean the "silver wash", not the "blanching"), whatever it was, it was applied to the flans, rather than the coins. But as usual, amazingly well explained!
Wow, where did you find that Valerian? I have never seen one so bright and well-struck, even in museums or reference books.
Please more history videos about mint technology please
That Valerian piece is amazing!
Instant buy, the best style Ive seen on any Valerian antoninianus. Thats Aureus-level engraving right there!
Very interesting- I do find ancient metallurgy and chemistry fascinating. My thought about the amalgam method is that surely mercury wouldn't itself be cheap and having to basically expend large amounts of it during the minting process would drastically affect the savings in silver. I mean cinnabar has to be mined, transported, elemental mercury has to be roasted out- all costing money. And then there's the toxicity of both cinnabar and elemental mercury. This isn't the comparatively small-scale gilding that we know was done with mercury amalgam, this was millions of coins...
Great video
Thank you, great clip.
Great information well presented. Thank you.
Congrats on 10.000 subs!
Also, thanks for the great video
Thank you! :)
I really enjoyed this video. Great work!
Today I received a Gallienus with near perfect silvering. I love it!
Love these coins!!
Nice video👍
depletion silvering was also often used until the modern times, for example in mint instructions from Kremnica mint from the end of 17th century, the loss of copper in acid bath was taken into consideration when deciding silver purity
Very interesting.
Silvered folles of the Tetrarchy in splendid condition are plentyful and easily obtained.
I have a variety of different ancient silvered coins! I have a coin of Constantine that has incredible silvering all over, an unknown emperor where the silvering is only visible in specific areas like between hairs in his beard, and I'm working on cleaning another one now. It is a stressful thing to clean a silvered coin!
Incredibly their are ancient Roman coins with full silvering intact.
Silvered antoninianii are gorgeous, but I'm afraid to fondle them haha
Just hold them by the rim and you should be fine :)
Some are just silvered.
Awesome video !!!!
Nice presentation as always, and spectacular Valerian coin! The antoninianus of Tacitus is actually quite interesting. The reverse shows 'XI' in the exergue, in contrast to the standard 'XXI' after the Aurelian monetary reform. This denotes that the alloy of this short-lived 'double antoninianus' contains 10 parts copper to 1 part silver, in contrast to the normal 20 : 1 ratio in the standard antoninianus. This probably also explains that it looks much more silvery than the normal antoniniani of the era. As far as i can find this denomination was only struck under Tacitus, so for only a year or so. A nice and rare coin!
One in 3 known of this type and control mark! :)
I wonder if the amalgam plating is where we get the term 'quick silver' for mercury. ;^)
Great video and amazing addition to the knowledge of Roman Coinage.
I've always wondered, in the late Roman era, what happened to the older silver denarii or double denarii, were they still used/in circulation or were forced to be worthless?
Some sources indicae they still circulated with an inflated value, equivalent to their silver content. But once hey got to the imperial authorities, through tax for example, they most likely were melted down and used to make new coinage, as it was highly profitable.
Looking forward to them Leo.
It's astounding to me how many coins with residual silvering I find on my coins that I clean. Most often it is different than the ones you showed though. Instead of fields and areas having some mirror finishes, I get coins with white traces over the entire surface interspersed with green almost like static on a screen. Beautiful in its own way. If you like, I'll send you some photos.
Loved the video. Is that picture of the Hadrian coin you showed from a CNG auction? If so I actually bought that fouree denarius.
Its from the Artemis Collection website. You have a coin provenanced to a very impressive collection!
So thier is a market for contemporary ancient counterfeit coins?
Thank for video 👍👍👍👍👍
Nice video! Thanks
Great stuff leo
Thanks Gordon! Theres more to come :)
I have an antononinius of Aurialian that is completely silvered and by looking at it you could not tell that it was silver plated. It seem Aurialians coins were much better silvered than before his rule. Sears in his book on Roman coins even mentioned this.
Aurelian reformed the coinage, vastly improving their quality compared to his predecessor, Quintillus.
what is the coin at the start of the video
Hadrian denarius :)
@@ClassicalNumismatics :)
Visually, I’m not a fan of golden coins. Nothing compares to the beauty of silver!
In early Roman Empire, how inflation did not happen with the senate "printing" a lot of bronze coins? Why only with silver coins diluted the inflation started?
It did happen in the republican period! After centuries of diminishing its size, weight and issuing lots of bronze coins, the silver Denarius was revalued, from 10 bronze Asses to 16!
In the Imperial period, the issuing of silver was very vast. Considering one silver denarius was worth 4 sestertii, or 8 dupondii, or 16 asses, you would need a LOT of base metal coins being struck to generate any kind of distortion on their value.
The thing is, bronze coins are bigger, heavier, and as a result much more labor-intensive to produce, even if the metal itself didnt have a lot of value. They didnt produce enough bronze coinage to create a distortion on the bronze-silver relation.
@@ClassicalNumismatics Thank you.
when saying that coins debased from 90% to 70% to 40% to 5% purity.... does it consider the silver cover? Or are taking about core only? And what is the direference between this cores a bilion?? Thanks
The layer over these coins is microns thick, meaning it is so thin that it doesnt have a significant impact on the silver content of the coin, different to today's electrochemical plating, which is much thicker.
So when we are talking about silver quantities here, consider whats in the flan itself.
Greetings, Classical Numismatics.
Today my denarius from the reign of Septimius Severus arrived.
It looks amazing.
My question is:
How much silver does a denarius from that time contain?
What and how much would you be able to buy in let's say a tavern or at a market?
Some Roman coins (like Many Constantine I coins for example) in MS grade do not have any silvering at all, I wonder if only a portion of them back then got the chance to be made with silvering and the rest didn't
No, all of the constantinian-era coins had that silvering layer over them. The reason many have reached our days in mint-state but without the silvering is simply due to the chemical reactions with air and any chemicals on the soil throughout the years.
The coins that did in reach our days with the silvering are less common because they not only had to be sheltered from the elements in some sort of container, but also have been particularly protected inside the container, maybe nicely tucked between coins so very little air or chemicals interacted with its surface.
Also, not all late roman coins had silvering added to them. Those that do mean they also have some intrinsic silver content in their alloy. Later pieces, such as those struck under Valentinian and later, have no silver at all, and were not silvered.
@@ClassicalNumismatics Thank you very much for your helpful explanation! Preservation must have played a key role as you pointed out, I think most silvered coins are probably found in clay pots which helped preventing the coins from getting contacted with soil and water. I've always thought silver is resistant to corrosion and can only get tarnished once exposed to natural elements, but for those coins without silvering, perhaps the silver layer being extremely thin is one of the main reasons they didn't last over a millennium. Thanks again for the wonderful video
I know you don't have time to help everyone with attributing their coins, it would be great if you had a discord channel where we as a community could help each other.
FORVM Ancient Coins has an Identification Help thread