Red v Yellow Colour Gold Sovereigns - Silver v Copper Alloy Content

[sovereignsteve]

8 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

Specsavers! 😎

I already use them and to be fair, my next pair is probably due early next year.

However, on reflection, the only G5 coin you have tested seems to be the 1932 Pretoria.

While not wanting to debunk your data on such flimsy evidence, I suggest it works both ways, and you can't be sure of your previous assertion with just one data point. Maybe there was something unusual about SA sovereigns of that time, and that they were not representative of the breed as a whole.😉

[LawrenceChard]

15 minutes ago, sovereignsteve said:

I already use them and to be fair, my next pair is probably due early next year.

However, on reflection, the only G5 coin you have tested seems to be the 1932 Pretoria.

While not wanting to debunk your data on such flimsy evidence, I suggest it works both ways, and you can't be sure of your previous assertion with just one data point. Maybe there was something unusual about SA sovereigns of that time, and that they were not representative of the breed as a whole.😉

No, I have tested hundreds, possibly thousands of sovereigns, including most dates and mintmarks, the small date set there is representative. Believe it.

There were  a few hundred on Flickr, but no longer.

I have a project to publish a large dataset, but to do it efficiently, we need to hook the Niton up to a PC and database, and we are already paddling very hard under the surface, on our systems etc.

Mode silver content on pre'QEII is around 3 to 4 ppt (0.4%), that's all it takes.

 

[Britannia47]

Sovereign Alloys - My favourite topic!

Earlier Sovereigns certainly had more silver in them, especially 'Australia' sovs.

Photo shows 2 x 1870 sovs. minted with  'yellow gold' (Silver & Copper) with a lovely matte finish. That's how I like them! However Steve Hill describes the 1868 sov as being 'yellow gold' with 8.33% silver. The 2005 Commemorative (150yrs) proof below is one I had tested, and it also showed 8.33% silver and therefore zero copper. I always believed that to be 'green gold' - It does seem to have the slightest 'green' hue to it. Anyway its a pretty unique colour. 

Just for info.....

[sovereignsteve]

19 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

Believe it

OK I'm a believer😁

[LawrenceChard]

12 minutes ago, Britannia47 said:

Sovereign Alloys - My favourite topic!

Earlier Sovereigns certainly had more silver in them, especially 'Australia' sovs.

Photo shows 2 x 1870 sovs. minted with  'yellow gold' (Silver & Copper) with a lovely matte finish. That's how I like them! However Steve Hill describes the 1868 sov as being 'yellow gold' with 8.33% silver. The 2005 Commemorative (150yrs) proof below is one I had tested, and it also showed 8.33% silver and therefore zero copper. I always believed that to be 'green gold' - It does seem to have the slightest 'green' hue to it. Anyway its a pretty unique colour. 

Just for info.....

 

and...

Date	Mint	Country	Coin	Type	Gold	Copper	Silver	Iron	Tin	Other
1817	London	U.K.	Sovereign	George III	912	40	45	2	0	0
1861	Sydney	Australia	Sovereign	-	916	27	56	0	1	0
1871	London	U.K.	Sovereign	Young Head St. George	915	76	8	0	0	0
1871	Sydney	U.K.	Sovereign	Young Head St. George	919	76	5	0	0	0

[Arganto]

I'm going to have (another) trawl through @LawrenceChard's available data set, mostly for fun but also to go over the early QEII coins. I've got a few that are quite pleasing to the eye and look very different to the modern copper only examples; I had assumed there was a little silver in the Gillick's and thought I had read as such on Mr. Chard's published data...my memory is a little hotwired these days so it could just be me...

[Arganto]

On 11/10/2021 at 16:21, LawrenceChard said:

There were  a few hundred on Flickr, but no longer.

This is what I was going to look through...do you have plans to put that up again or are you waiting for the project to be completed? I appreciate it must be a pain to upload but it was rather good. If you did publish again it would be advantageous if it was hosted on your own domain so as not to be at the mercy of image hosting sites 👀

[LawrenceChard]

2 hours ago, Liam84 said:

I'm going to have (another) trawl through @LawrenceChard's available data set, mostly for fun but also to go over the early QEII coins. I've got a few that are quite pleasing to the eye and look very different to the modern copper only examples; I had assumed there was a little silver in the Gillick's and thought I had read as such on Mr. Chard's published data...my memory is a little hotwired these days so it could just be me...

 

48 minutes ago, Liam84 said:

This is what I was going to look through...do you have plans to put that up again or are you waiting for the project to be completed? I appreciate it must be a pain to upload but it was rather good. If you did publish again it would be advantageous if it was hosted on your own domain so as not to be at the mercy of image hosting sites 👀

I'm glad to hear that you found it useful.

We will be adding some other dates to the existing page, but have also pencilled in a major project to test almost every date and mintmark combination, capturing the data directly to a PC, then making it available as a complete work. It will take some time though!

 

[sovereignsteve]

2 hours ago, LawrenceChard said:

but have also pencilled in a major project to test almost every date and mintmark combination

So that's a fair few tests then

I have meant to ask you for a while now; what are the running costs of your Niton XRF analyser, if any? Any cost per test, periodic maintenance, calibration costs etc?

I assume it will be a well specified instrument and cost a fair bit?

[LawrenceChard]

6 minutes ago, sovereignsteve said:

So that's a fair few tests then

I have meant to ask you for a while now; what are the running costs of your Niton XRF analyser, if any? Any cost per test, periodic maintenance, calibration costs etc?

I assume it will be a well specified instrument and cost a fair bit?

Annual service is over £1000
It has a built in calibrate function
Minimal power costs.
There are 3 "consumables" similar to a the lamp in a projector, these cost about £3000 to £4000 each, and have no operational life guarantees. When they fail, they fail, and the replacement cost is ours. So far, none of these 3 have failed, but writing this is tempting fate!

😎
 

[sovereignsteve]

10 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

So far, none of these 3 have failed, but writing this is tempting fate!

You must have had this instrument, what, at least 5 years?🤔

[LawrenceChard]

52 minutes ago, sovereignsteve said:

You must have had this instrument, what, at least 5 years?🤔

Yes, at a guess.
You thinking of getting one? 😎

[sovereignsteve]

38 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

Yes, at a guess.
You thinking of getting one? 😎

No, would love one but couldn't justify the cost. It would be a nice toy though.

I'm just an old scientist, I can't help poking my nose into technical things😁

[LawrenceChard]

16 minutes ago, sovereignsteve said:

No, would love one but couldn't justify the cost. It would be a nice toy though.

I'm just an old scientist, I can't help poking my nose into technical things😁

I poke my nose into things, but 'snot always productive. 😎

[RDHC]

What puzzles (and annoys) me is that you can get gold coins with only copper as the alloy that look a great deal better than the Mint's current offerings. I have in mind the 20 kroner coins issued by Denmark and Norway/Sweden from the later 19th century to WW1, of which I have a few examples. What's more these 20 kroner are only 0.900 pure gold i.e. less pure than a sovereign. Yet they have an attractive 'old gold' colour, not the paler pure gold of, say, a Britannia, but equally not the dreadful pinky 'rose gold', 14 carat look of current sovereigns. I doubt if this is because  of natural ageing, but I am open to correction on this point. I assume that copper is copper wherever found (or is there a different variety mined in Scandanavia??), so somehow the mints for these coins found a way of avoiding the rose look  (probably unintentionally). I have not found any technical analysis of these coins - perhaps Lawrence Chard could help? - but they don't seem to have any silver in them (not naturally found in Scandanavia, so far as I know).

Any ideas anyone?

[Zhorro]

It would be great if the RM produced a sovereign made out of recycled gold AND silver as this would give a more yellow colour than the current sovereigns.

[jultorsk]

1 hour ago, RDHC said:

What puzzles (and annoys) me is that you can get gold coins with only copper as the alloy that look a great deal better than the Mint's current offerings. I have in mind the 20 kroner coins issued by Denmark and Norway/Sweden from the later 19th century to WW1, of which I have a few examples. What's more these 20 kroner are only 0.900 pure gold i.e. less pure than a sovereign. Yet they have an attractive 'old gold' colour, not the paler pure gold of, say, a Britannia, but equally not the dreadful pinky 'rose gold', 14 carat look of current sovereigns. I doubt if this is because  of natural ageing, but I am open to correction on this point. I assume that copper is copper wherever found (or is there a different variety mined in Scandanavia??), so somehow the mints for these coins found a way of avoiding the rose look  (probably unintentionally). I have not found any technical analysis of these coins - perhaps Lawrence Chard could help? - but they don't seem to have any silver in them (not naturally found in Scandanavia, so far as I know).

Any ideas anyone?

Cannot comment on Danes or Swedes, but the Finns rather helpfully wrote the content on the coin 20 markkaa coin: 5.806 grams of gold (=kultaa) and 0.645 grams of copper (= kuparia). 😊 🇫🇮

 

[Arganto]

1 hour ago, RDHC said:

What puzzles (and annoys) me is that you can get gold coins with only copper as the alloy that look a great deal better than the Mint's current offerings. I have in mind the 20 kroner coins issued by Denmark and Norway/Sweden from the later 19th century to WW1, of which I have a few examples. What's more these 20 kroner are only 0.900 pure gold i.e. less pure than a sovereign. Yet they have an attractive 'old gold' colour, not the paler pure gold of, say, a Britannia, but equally not the dreadful pinky 'rose gold', 14 carat look of current sovereigns. I doubt if this is because  of natural ageing, but I am open to correction on this point. I assume that copper is copper wherever found (or is there a different variety mined in Scandanavia??), so somehow the mints for these coins found a way of avoiding the rose look  (probably unintentionally). I have not found any technical analysis of these coins - perhaps Lawrence Chard could help? - but they don't seem to have any silver in them (not naturally found in Scandanavia, so far as I know).

Any ideas anyone?

I believe some have hypothesised that the Royal Mint use some kind of finishing/lamination/coating on modern sovereigns that influences the final colour. By all accounts all QEII sovereigns are gold/copper only, but the early coins (first two portraits) look a lot more 'old gold' than the newer issues. If the copper content is the same then there has to be another factor. Also it seems modern proof and matte finish coins look more golden, which could lend credence to this idea.

What could be fun is if someone was happy to use something that could theoretically strip off whatever is on the outside of a modern sovereign without damaging the gold or copper themselves. What chemical or technique this would be I have no idea. It could be the process is more than just something that leaves a layer, so doing this may prove pointless. Maybe @LawrenceChard could mess around with a modern sovereign that is destined for the melt pot before it's thrown in...? 😎 🤣

*Added some pictures of a modern proof, a bullion issue and an Gillick bullion coin (pilfered from the interwebs)

 

Edited October 22, 2021 by Liam84
*

[LawrenceChard]

2 hours ago, Zhorro said:

It would be great if the RM produced a sovereign made out of recycled gold AND silver as this would give a more yellow colour than the current sovereigns.

Recycled anything would look better! 😎

Even old milk bottle tops (anybody remember milk bottles)?

[HerefordBullyun]

10 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

Recycled anything would look better! 😎

Even old milk bottle tops (anybody remember milk bottles)?

I used to do milk deliveries as a kid and the lad who I did it with used to surf on top of the van he was crazy and now I believe hes High speed traffic policeman lol

[LawrenceChard]

3 hours ago, RDHC said:

What puzzles (and annoys) me is that you can get gold coins with only copper as the alloy that look a great deal better than the Mint's current offerings. I have in mind the 20 kroner coins issued by Denmark and Norway/Sweden from the later 19th century to WW1, of which I have a few examples. What's more these 20 kroner are only 0.900 pure gold i.e. less pure than a sovereign. Yet they have an attractive 'old gold' colour, not the paler pure gold of, say, a Britannia, but equally not the dreadful pinky 'rose gold', 14 carat look of current sovereigns. I doubt if this is because  of natural ageing, but I am open to correction on this point. I assume that copper is copper wherever found (or is there a different variety mined in Scandanavia??), so somehow the mints for these coins found a way of avoiding the rose look  (probably unintentionally). I have not found any technical analysis of these coins - perhaps Lawrence Chard could help? - but they don't seem to have any silver in them (not naturally found in Scandanavia, so far as I know).

Any ideas anyone?

 

2 hours ago, jultorsk said:

Cannot comment on Danes or Swedes, but the Finns rather helpfully wrote the content on the coin 20 markkaa coin: 5.806 grams of gold (=kultaa) and 0.645 grams of copper (= kuparia). 😊 🇫🇮

 

 

1 hour ago, Liam84 said:

I believe some have hypothesised that the Royal Mint use some kind of finishing/lamination/coating on modern sovereigns that influences the final colour. By all accounts all QEII sovereigns are gold/copper only, but the early coins (first two portraits) look a lot more 'old gold' than the newer issues. If the copper content is the same then there has to be another factor. Also it seems modern proof and matte finish coins look more golden, which could lend credence to this idea.

What could be fun is if someone was happy to use something that could theoretically strip off whatever is on the outside of a modern sovereign without damaging the gold or copper themselves. What chemical or technique this would be I have no idea. It could be the process is more than just something that leaves a layer, so doing this may prove pointless. Maybe @LawrenceChard could mess around with a modern sovereign that is destined for the melt pot before it's thrown in...? 😎 🤣

*Added some pictures of a modern proof, a bullion issue and an Gillick bullion coin (pilfered from the interwebs)

@RDHC If you "tag" someone (@ followed by their username) TSF alerts them, rather than just name then without the tag, then you are more likely to get a response. I only saw this because @Liam84 tagged me in.

I don't know why you think those Scandinavian coins are 90% gold, 10% copper, and I strongly suspect they contain at least some traces of silver.

Colour of gold alloys does not depend primarly on the proportion of gold, but more on the precise mixture of other constituents, and the presence or absence of some.

Neither is it like adding yellow and blue pigment to get green. The colour of light we see reflected off objects depends on the surface layer of the object, and in particular the arrangement of crystalline pattern or lattice. Assuming white light (full spectrum) falls on the object, some wavelengths of light are absorbed, other reflected. To understand this, you may need to try to imagine balls or other shapes of different sizes, and see how well or badly they would fit together. As an example, here is a Public Domain image from Wikipedia:

It represent sodium chloride, common salt. Coincidentally it is shown using @ChardsCoinandBullionDealer house colours.

Also alloyed gold coins will tone slightly with age.

Mint Lustre is a well known quality of most coins. When coins are struck, the blanks go through a rather violent process under great pressure, causing them to partially melt or soften. Some of this metal then flows into the incuse areas of the dies, while some is restrained by the raised areas or the dies. This all happens within a fraction of a second, before cooling. Understandably, this affects the texture of the surfaces, producing mint lustre. the surface finish of the dies will also have an effect, depending whether they are highly polished, or different degrees of matt finish. Die wear and the finish on the blanks or planchets will also have an effect.

Yes, copper is copper, but it is unlikely that mints use highly refined copper with all impurities removed. Most metallic elements are not mined in their pure state, but in mixtures with other metals, and usually as "salts". Copper, silver and gold are often products and by-products of each other, so that "copper" may contain some impurities or traces of silver or other metals. Most refining is aimed at removing undesirable elements such as lead. If the amount of silver in partially refined copper is not high enough to warrant separation, most refiners will leave it alone. Similarly, silver is commonly found in close association with gold in their ores, and again, there is little point in refining gold to remove all traces of silver if it going to be alloyed. Exceptions would include any metals required to be ultra-pure for scientific purposes, but such refining would be expensive, uneconomic and impractical.

While I had possibly not noticed, or forgotten, about KUPARIA on Finnish coins, I also doubt whether this is accurate, for reasons similar to those above. From memory, I think they are a pleasant colour rather than rotten red.

Any hypothesis that the Royal Mint use some kind of finishing/lamination/coating on modern sovereigns is probably due to lack or understanding or a highly active imagination (caused by some stimulant?). Unless they have found some cunning way to gold plate copper yet make it undetectable. (Now there's a great idea for conspiracy theorists). 😎

It is good practice to show credits for sources, especially photos. While I do not know where Liam's first two images came from, the third one, the 2015 gold sovereign, is such a high quality photo that it could only have come from https://www.chards.co.uk/2015-gold-sovereign-elizabeth-ii-unc-london/319, but on checking, it appears to be from elsewhere.

We do have some Danish gold coins in stock, so I will test one later. Meanwhile we will continue looking for the other countries.

 

 

[LawrenceChard]

49 minutes ago, HerefordBullyun said:

I used to do milk deliveries as a kid and the lad who I did it with used to surf on top of the van he was crazy and now I believe hes High speed traffic policeman lol

You might need to be to drive at some of the speeds they do.

He's not the same traffic officer who stopped Brett Richardson for speeding is he? 

 

😎

[HerefordBullyun]

16 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

You might need to be to drive at some of the speeds they do.

He's not the same traffic officer who stopped Brett Richardson for speeding is he? 

 

😎

I used to have factory chipped jet black XR3i, it went like stink and I had a sticker on the back saying - I'm speeding because I'm touching cloth - lol

[Arganto]

30 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

Any hypothesis that the Royal Mint use some kind of finishing/lamination/coating on modern sovereigns is probably due to lack or understanding or a highly active imagination (caused by some stimulant?). Unless they have found some cunning way to gold plate copper yet make it undetectable. (Now there's a great idea for conspiracy theorists). 😎

It is good practice to show credits for sources, especially photos. While I do not know where Liam's first two images came from, the third one, the 2015 gold sovereign, is such a high quality photo that it could only have come from https://www.chards.co.uk/2015-gold-sovereign-elizabeth-ii-unc-london/319, but on checking, it appears to be from elsewhere.

Although highly stimulated at all times I must clarify the 'something has been done to it' hypothesis is not my own, rather something I've come across a couple of times whilst reading forums. It is interesting what you've said about polishing, maybe if The RM weren't so liberal with the elbow grease these modern sovereigns would look nicer 😁

The images were admittedly pulled from a DDG image search and whereas I am guilty of not citing sources I make sure not to pilfer from a place I recognise. Does that make it right? No. It does mean I don't get into your bad books though...☺️ 

[LawrenceChard]

1 minute ago, Liam84 said:

Although highly stimulated at all times I must clarify the 'something has been done to it' hypothesis is not my own, rather something I've come across a couple of times whilst reading forums. It is interesting what you've said about polishing, maybe if The RM weren't so liberal with the elbow grease these modern sovereigns would look nicer 😁

The images were admittedly pulled from a DDG image search and whereas I am guilty of not citing sources I make sure not to pilfer from a place I recognise. Does that make it right? No. It does mean I don't get into your bad books though...☺️ 

I realised you were not the source of the hypotheses.

I am happy for people to use our images for educational use, with a credit to the source.