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Author Topic: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?  (Read 2617 times)

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Offline Ken W2

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Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« on: April 17, 2021, 10:44:51 pm »

At this point, to me it seems that billon is one of those things that you know when you see it. But is there technically a specific percentage of silver at which, and below, we say the coin is billon instead of silver. I’m not saying I’ve read every article or post on billon coins, but I’ve read several and can’t find a specific point of demarcation.
Ken

Offline Altamura

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #1 on: April 18, 2021, 03:02:07 am »
When looking at different definitions of billon then I find either quite vague statements like "consisting of a high proportion of non-silver components" or "typically between 30 and 40% of silver",  or I find a sharp cut at 50%.

You nearly never find a lower boundary for the silver content.

It seems that there is no internationally standardized definition  :-\.

Regards

Altamura



Offline SC

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #2 on: April 18, 2021, 10:41:13 am »
Wikipedia talks about 2-40%, with no further details.

I seem to remember reading a figure of 20% that stuck in my mind but no idea where from.

Personally I don't think we should consider the late Roman silvered-bronzes as billon and so therefore should set a minimum silver content of over 5% minimum. 

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Offline Meepzorp

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #3 on: April 18, 2021, 11:27:03 am »
Hi folks,

Since Italian Medieval coins are one of my specialty areas of collecting, and since many of those types of coins are described as "billon" ("Mi" in Italian), I have been painfully aware for many years now that there is tremendous variation in the silver/base metal content of billon coins. Some of them look silver (which implies a high silver content), and some of them look bronze (which implies a low silver content). There is even tremendous variation within a specific type or series. In fact, just judging from what I've seen regarding Italian Medieval coins, I don't know if there ever was a standardized definition of the term "billon" throughout history.

Some Italian Medieval coins look like they contain 90-95% silver, and a different example of the exact same type/issue looks like it contains 5-10% silver. Yet, they are both described as "billon". A perfect example of this variation within type/issue/series are coins issued by the city of Desana, which are usually imitations of French coins (Liard, etc.). Apparently, during the Medieval period, the nobility in Desana liked to copy French coins.

Meepzorp

Offline Ken W2

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #4 on: April 18, 2021, 07:47:17 pm »

Thanks guys.

Hmmmm. I’m really thinking about this now and wondering why the Romans even bothered to make billon with only five percent silver and I read somewhere last night some issues were as low as two percent. Perhaps Roman society (and soldiers) simply wasn’t ready for “fiat” coinage and the moneyers and emperors knew it or at least were concerned about it ? I suppose by the time Ants became silver washed bronze they had no other choice. Of course, bronze had intrinsic value but not nearly enough to accept that a silver washed bronze Ant was really worth two denarii. So in a way maybe these bronze Ants were early, truly fiat coinage. I say “truly” because that the Ant never had the silver content of two denarii and was steadily debased, meant that from its inception it was fiat coinage, in a sense.
Ken

Offline esnible

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #5 on: April 18, 2021, 09:23:09 pm »
I’m really thinking about this now and wondering why the Romans even bothered to make billon with only five percent silver and I read somewhere last night some issues were as low as two percent. Perhaps Roman society (and soldiers) simply wasn’t ready for “fiat” coinage and the moneyers and emperors knew it or at least were concerned about it ?

Let me ask a different question.

There is an American coin that was mostly billion.  Can you name it?  Few can.

The Kennedy half dollar was silver in 1964.  From 1965-1970, it was silver clad onto a central core of billon.  After 1970 it was copper-nickel clad to a core of 100% copper.  If you have ever looked at the edge of a late-60s half dollar it is hard to tell the center layer is anything special.  Were Americans ready for fiat half dollar?  They accepted the fiat quarter.

Tradition can be powerful.

Offline Ken W2

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #6 on: April 18, 2021, 11:20:22 pm »

Interesting you make that point as I was thinking of our 40% silver clad half dollar, and how it was made, last night as I opened this thread. That method of manufacture allowed the coin to maintain its silver appearance, but in a small way was just part of our transition to utter fiat currency. I guess it started here in 1933 when FDR took our gold, and accelerated when we stopped making 90% coinage, and then Nixon took us off the gold standard. It’s just a house of cards now, imho.

Offline Altamura

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #7 on: April 19, 2021, 03:41:17 am »
... Wikipedia talks about 2-40%, with no further details. ...
It depends on the version of Wikipedia you are looking at  :):

English (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billon_(alloy) ):
"... some cities on Lesbos used coins made of 60% copper and 40% silver. In both ancient times and the Middle Ages, leaner mixtures were adopted, with less than 2% silver content."

German (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billon ):
"... deren Silbergehalt weniger als 500/1000 (50 %) beträgt." => less than 50% silver content.

French (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billon_(alliage) ):
"...contenant souvent moins de 30 % d'argent ..." => often less than 30% silver
"...  le bon billon ou billon blanc contenant environ 40 à 50 % d’argent ... bas billon ou billon roux qui lui ne contenait pas plus de 20 % d’argent" => good billon with 40 to 50% silver, low billon with not more than 20% of silver

I haven't checked the other language versions, but you see that even within Wikipedia there is no uniform definition  :-\.

Regards

Altamura


Offline Kevin D

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #8 on: April 19, 2021, 11:02:00 am »
some other references...

Kenneth W. Harl  ‘Coinage in the Roman Economy’
Page 119, Billon is “an alloy of bronze mixed with less than 25 percent silver”.

Michel and Karin Prieur  ‘A Type Corpus of The Syro-Phoenician Tetradrachms and Their Fractions from 57 BC to AD 253’
Pages 209-216, Glossary Of terms.
Billon : “A silver alloy in which the silver is less than 50%.”

John Mellville-Jones ‘A Dictionary of Ancient Roman Coins
Pages 179-181, Metals Of Coinage. “The other alloy in which much Roman coinage was struck is billon, which is distinguished from potin by having at least a small silver content. Roman silver coinage was struck in silver of a high degree of purity during the Republic…but during the Empire its fineness was lowered from time to time. During the 3rd century AD, when the proportion of silver which it contained fell below 50%, we can begin to speak of a billon coinage, and this was replaced in the later years of the century by coins which can be described as ‘silver-washed’ or ‘surface-silvered’.”


Offline Kevin D

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #9 on: April 19, 2021, 11:10:16 am »
I’m really thinking about this now and wondering why the Romans even bothered to make billon with only five percent silver and I read somewhere last night some issues were as low as two percent. Perhaps Roman society (and soldiers) simply wasn’t ready for “fiat” coinage and the moneyers and emperors knew it or at least were concerned about it ?

Let me ask a different question.

There is an American coin that was mostly billion.  Can you name it?  Few can.

The Kennedy half dollar was silver in 1964.  From 1965-1970, it was silver clad onto a central core of billon.  After 1970 it was copper-nickel clad to a core of 100% copper.  If you have ever looked at the edge of a late-60s half dollar it is hard to tell the center layer is anything special.  Were Americans ready for fiat half dollar?  They accepted the fiat quarter.

Tradition can be powerful.

Another candidate is the 'nickel' of 1942-45 which has an alloy of 56% copper, 35% silver, and 9% manganese.

Offline SC

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #10 on: April 19, 2021, 11:35:01 am »
Ideally we need some sort of continuum, with agreement on quantities of silver:

E.g. Pure silver - silver - debased silver - billon - silvered bronze - trace amounts of silver.

But being an academic subject, gaining universal agreement is about as likely as finding a talking cat.

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Offline Kevin D

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #11 on: April 19, 2021, 11:48:37 am »

Interesting you make that point as I was thinking of our 40% silver clad half dollar, and how it was made, last night as I opened this thread. That method of manufacture allowed the coin to maintain its silver appearance, but in a small way was just part of our transition to utter fiat currency. I guess it started here in 1933 when FDR took our gold, and accelerated when we stopped making 90% coinage, and then Nixon took us off the gold standard. It’s just a house of cards now, imho.

When accused of running the world's biggest Ponzi scheme, Bernie Madoff was quoted as saying that the US government is a Ponzi scheme.

Perhaps like billon, it all depends on your point of view.

Offline Virgil H

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #12 on: April 26, 2021, 09:59:53 pm »
Couple of points. Weren't bronze coins essentially fiat coins? In the ANS Greek Coin Lyceum I asked about the late adoption of bronze versus electrum and silver. One of the potential answers was that people wouldn't accept coins that had no real value. They wanted something with real value. Plenty of other potential explanations to that question, as well, such as what the earliest coins were used for and that it was only later that coins were needed for retail lower value transactions. But, according to Peter van Alfen, it appears there was great resistance to the introduction and use of bronze coinage.

Regarding Wikipedia, they have developed a great reputation, but should never be taken as an authoritative source for anything. They even have pay to play schemes going on where negative information about people and countries and companies may be sanitized. I trust Wikipedia for some things, but certainly not all.

Virgil

Offline Altamura

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #13 on: April 27, 2021, 02:37:17 am »
... Weren't bronze coins essentially fiat coins? ...
Yes, but where is the connection to the definition of billon  ???.

... I trust Wikipedia for some things, but certainly not all. ...
Me too. With more technical and natural scientific topics they are quite reliable, with "softer" ones there is more opinion.
But "billon" seems to be a more technical question  :).

Regards

Altamura



Offline Ken W2

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #14 on: April 27, 2021, 07:57:13 am »

Altamura:  The fiat coinage discussion is kind of a tangent from my original question, but I started that tangent when musing about why the moneyers and emperors would even bother producing Ants, declared to be two denarii, containing as low as 5% silver and maybe less. To me, the Ant, from its inception, through its steady debasement, to ultimately being only silver washed bronze, is an historical example of the development of truly fiat currency.

I started this thread, in part, because I have embarked on an effort to collect at least one example of a “silver” coin issued by or under each emperor and empress in the imperial era, to the extent availability and my budget will allow. Thus I was looking for the end point of that collection, chronologically. Relatedly, I was wondering whether there is some understanding in the hobby about when a coin should be listed by the dealer or catalogued in a collection as billon instead of silver. For me, it’s an easy call that a silver washed bronze Ant is not a “silver” coin. But, while we know the XXI Ants are metallurgically billon, for purposes of our hobby are they accepted as RSCs ? In other words, even though we know many Ants are not made of an alloy containing a high percentage, do we nevertheless accept them as a RSC, and is there an accepted line of demarcation?

Ken

Offline Joe Sermarini

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Re: Technically when is a coin billon instead of AR ?
« Reply #15 on: April 27, 2021, 08:45:09 am »
For the most part, if it looks silver and the references say it is silver, I call it silver. If it looks debased and references say it is billon, I call it billon. I realize this is not a very satisfying answer.
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