Roman coins composition changed to silver

Just checking my collection and I am sure this were not silver a while ago. what happend?

N#44880

N#40300

N#59616

N#167736

Just checked wildwinds and this are all AE, can someone explain? @John Conduitt @Arendil 

Hi,

The antoniniani aren't in copper. At the origin, the antoniniani are with 50% of silver but quickly, this content decreased and the antoniniani under Gallien had only 2,2 - 2,5% (publication de P. Le Gentilhomme). And for the aureliani after Aurelian reform (i think it's wrong to use “Antoninien” for a radiate coin after 274) has 5% of silver (XXI = 1 silver volume into 20 metal volume).

The antoniniani and after the aureliani are in billon (<50% Ag) if we want to be exact but for research coins on Numista, it's more easily if we use silver instead of billon as composition. The precise composition of silver is added in the field of the composition. 

But you can't use AE (aeres in latin) for antoniniani. It's reserved for bronze coins as Sestertii and Dupondii (orichalcum), Asses and Semisses (copper) and quadrans (copper or orichalcum).

I want to add that Wildwinds isn't a references site, OCRE is the best tool we can find on Roman coins on internet even if some errors can be seen. Wildwinds is good to have good photos but the informations are to take with care.

Best regards,

Nicolas

Ok but is it correct to list a coin with a composition of 5% silver to be silver? It is very confusing especially when those coins look more like bronze than silver. There is no mention anywhere of the low amount of silver in composition, it just says silver. And because of that the silver weight and value in any collection containing this coins will be higher than it actually is. 

Billon should be used never the less then to indicate the low grade nature of such coins (when now also with silver content). Just using silver is simply confusing and dishonest as they are mostly copper coins with a sprinkle of silver dust. 

As long as there is no silver purity given they will not effect any previous metal statistics.

Without a fineness number for the silver the weight of the coin does not enter into the total silver weight or total silver melt value.

A silver coin with less than .500 fineness is defined in Numista as billon, not silver.

I reassure you, it's very difficult for me to don't indicate “billon” when we know the fineness less than 50%.

The best answer that i can tell you is the answer gave by John Conduitt when i said him for me indicate “silver” for billon coins is wrong.

On the question of labelling billon coins ‘silver’, I do not agree that these should be listed as billon. I'm well aware of the research, but this doesn't remove the problem that it isn't clear to the collector which metal they have. On Numista you cannot even search for ‘silver or billon', only one of the other, and if some are labelled ‘billon’ it makes searching that much harder, especially if you don't even know what billon is, let alone know of the work of Depeyrot and the dates from which the purity falls. Silvered/silver washed coins just make this even more complicated, as do coins that might have examples both above or below 50%. On Ocre it has both silver and billon in the search, but even they recommend you tick ‘silver’ and ‘billon’ if you really want to find your coin, because of the inconsistent way the coins are labelled. Making them all silver solves this problem immediately, agrees with RIC and what most collectors expect (they are told it is ‘AR’), and in fact agrees with what the Romans would have been told they were i.e. the authorities would have called them silver. The usability of Numista is very important, but it doesn't have to be ‘wrong’ by not using the word ‘billon’ (I'm sure the Romans didn't). Numista has a ‘fineness’ field, so that you can mark a coin as ‘silver’ but it's purity as ‘40%’. This, I think, is actually a more useful way of labelling ‘billon’ coins and could be used with gold or copper coins too.

I think the guidlines are quite clear about this one. 

For coins containing less than 50% of a precious metal:

• Silver coins: select “billon” and specify the silver content in the fineness field.
  • Billon (.150 silver)
• Gold: select “gold” and specify the fineness.
  • Gold (.333)