First Cupro-Nickel Coin ?

googled this up for you

Cupro-nickel was known to the Romans as an artificial "white" gold or silver termed "claudianum" and very possibly the "molybdochalcum" of the Alexandrians.

The cupro-nickel alloy was known by Chinese since circa 3rd century BCE as "white copper" (some weapons from the Warring States Period were in Cu-Ni alloy).[2]

The ancient Greeks were producing cupronickel and a lower quality imitation of it in the Aegean Bronze Age and known as "orichalcum". The Greco-Bactrian kings issued the first cupro-nickel coins, with Euthydemus II, dating from 180 to 170 BCE, and his younger brothers Pantaleon and Agathocles around 170 BCE.[4]

The theory of Chinese origins of Bactrian cupro-nickel was suggested in 1868 by Flight, who found the coins and considered the oldest cupro-nickel coins yet discovered were of a very similar alloy to Chinese paktong.[4] Cunningham in 1873 argued the coins must have been the result of overland trade from China, through India to Greece -- highly controversial at the time and much derided. In 1973, Cheng and Schwitter in their new analyses argued the Bactrian alloys (copper, lead, iron, nickel and cobalt) were closely similar to Chinese paktong, and that out of nine known Asian nickel deposits, only those in China could provide same identical chemical content ratios.[4] However this hypothesis, although widely publicised, was later disproven by a perhaps over-enthusiastic oversight of the well-known Persian arsenic-nickel mines much closer to Bactria and known to be exploited by the Greeks and Persians.[4]

Actually, the Romans used zinc, not nickel for the manufacture of gold coloured coins. They called this alloy 'orichalcum', and they made sestertii (4 asses) and dupondii (2 asses) from this alloy. Orichalcum is really brass. I had a nice Sestertius of Nero, but I sold in 1976, along with the rest of my (then) collection to raise money for the deposit on my first house. That particular coin depicted the closed doors of the Temple of Janus on the reverse, indicating a rarely enjoyed period of peace across the the Empire.

The Bactrians did in fact issue white metal coins which were not (as they may have understood), silver. They were a natural alloy of copper and nickel.

Electrum is a natural alloy of gold and silver, and was the metal used in the first coins, around 560 BC.

The earliest date I can find of an issuer knowingly using nickel in an alloy, and issued in a coins, is the U.S. Flying Eagle cent, of 1856.

According to Wikipedia, nickel was first isolated and identified in 1751.


Some of the legendary swords of ancient and medieval times were made of rare meteorite steel, which almost always contained a small proportion of nickel in the natural alloy. Such natural alloys rusted less than the man made steels of the times, maintained sharper edges for much longer, were less likely to brittle failure. If such swords were made from meteorite steel, small wonder that they became the stuff of legends!

Excalibur!

DVCollector: Thanks for providing the link.
I spent about an hour perusing the extending link:
'Ancient Ooriental Coins'.
I have a few books on Indo Greek and Indo Asiatic coins, but I could do with more references, hence the fun time had by myself in reading through the links provided.
I have a dozen or so coins in this area of numismatics.

One of the main reasons for my interest in Indo Greek Asiatic Indian coinages has to do with travelling overland through this part of the World. I still have a great deal to learn, but I don't have the financial resources to acquire a copy of Michael Michener's works on this subject.

China does have some interesting use of materials when it comes to making coins. They even made some out of bamboo.

The very first thread initiated by me in the CCF relates:
"The Bus Driver".