But wait. Sigli were made of pure silver, he notes. This one was not. The metal at its base remains to be analyzed; maybe lead. And as lipstick on a pig doth not a pretty porker make, a silver coat doesn't make a silver coin. That doesn't necessarily translate into "ancient counterfeiting," Levy adds. It could be that the treasury issuing the coinage was under stress.When might the Grand Poobah of Wherever issue base metal covered in silver or gold? For example, when times were rough, the treasury was low, soldiers needed to be paid and silver ore was rare. The government might not have been eager to counterfeit sigli, it may have simply been scrambling to survive. Either way, the result would have been devaluation of the currency.
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