FINDING A FOURREE
Convention dictates that we spell the word as fourree; but you will also see it in print with an acute accent (é); and with alternative spellings using one r and one e. Each derives from the same French word that translates, in some French/English dictionaries, as stuffed; a somewhat confusing word to describe a plated coin.
The easiest way to see and examine an example of a plated coin is probably to rummage through a jar of loose change into which members of your household have tossed low denomination coins during the past few years.
If you are in the UK and find a 2p dated later than 1992, you will have a plated coin in your grasp. Only a thin coating of copper gives it the colour you expected; within, its composition is 94% mild steel.
Have another rummage through your jar and find a 2p dated pre-1992. Apart from its date, it looks identical to the first; but pre-1992 the 2p was struck from bronze (97% copper; 2.5% zinc; 0.5% tin). The spiralling price of copper had forced the switch to a plated 2p; yet copper's value continued to rise. By 2006 the copper in each bronze 2p was worth 3p, with more than 2½ billion pre-1992 2p coins still in circulation. Despite a Royal Mint warning, large numbers had gone into melting pots before the value of copper fell dramatically in 2008.
An interesting gallery of ancient fourrees may be seen in TimeLine Auction's archived catalogues.
Dozens have gone under TimeLine's auctioneers' hammers; including ancient Greek, Roman Republican, and Roman Imperial examples. Almost all were counterfeits that contained smaller quantities of precious metal than the genuine coins they imitated.
To make their fourrees, most fakers covered a copper flan with silver foil, then heated the parcel before striking it between dies. The right temperature and the correct weight of hammer blow, would result in the layers fusing together by formation of a silver-copper combination known as a eutectic alloy. The word eutectic comes from the Greek eśtektos, meaning easily melted. The formula is 72% silver and 28% copper; proportions that result in the lowest melting point of any mixture of silver and copper. Some fourree makers ground-up silver and copper in those combinations and sprinkled the resulting powder between the copper flan and the silver foil before heating and striking took place. This increased the strength of the final bond; though in circulation, wear took its toll on the silvered surface and eventually exposed parts of the inner flan to air and moisture. Resulting corrosion then exposed the fourree as a counterfeit coin.
Because copper weighs substantially less than silver, you might expect that lightness of weight would have given away a fourree when it changed hands in circulation. Some counterfeiters avoided that problem by making their "coins" slightly broader than genuine coins to make up the weight. Additionally, they probably passed their counterfeits in busy marketplaces where the numbers of coins changing hands gave little time for those receiving them to check weights carefully.
More prudent merchants and money changers insisted on testing any coin's purity by drawing or hammering a sharp blade across its surface to score it with a tell-tale banker's mark, chop mark or test cut. This Athens tetradrachm has two test cuts, one on the obverse and one on the reverse:
An unfortunately placed, or over-enthusiastically executed test mark blemishes any coin, whether or not the scoring exposes the innards of a fourree. Similarly, damage caused to a fourree as a result of burial in the ground can considerably reduce its eye appeal. If, on the other hand, we look more benevolently on the scars, some can be seen as capturing a moment in ancient history when a buyer's dishonesty was confirmed .. or when a seller exposed a cheat.
We must also bear in mind that fourrees and test-marked genuine coins can offer beginners opportunities to acquire additions to their collections at prices within their budget limits.
For example in the TimeLine Auctions sale on 30th Nov 2011 a Claudius DE BRITANN fourree denarius (Lot 95) with little more than edge damage to its silver plating, sold for £1,495 including buyer's premium.
.. whereas in a TimeLine Auctions sale on 9th Sept 2015 another Claudius DE BRITANN fourree denarius (Lot 2650), with considerable damage to its silver plating, sold for £310 inc. bp.
The DE BRITANN denarius commemorated the Claudian invasion of AD 43 and the subsequent colonisation of Britain. Both of the above coins came from the hoard of approximately 170 fourree Claudius denarii found in 1995 near Wortham in Suffolk. The imitations were probably made in Britain around AD 50-51.
A short note in addition: One often sees bronze versions of 2-3rd century denarii with no traces of silver. These are not fourrees but, depending on the standard of workmanship, likely to be "Limes" denarii, struck at military mints along the Danube border. These small mints did not store silver for security purposes, but used official dies for their bronze versions for use by the troops.
Christopher Wren (Chief Numismatist), Timeline Auctions, 23.5.2023 (with a short addition by Dane)
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