Wages, Fixed Incomes and the Free Coinage of Silver: Or, the Danger Involved in the Free Coinage of Silver at the Ratio of 16 to 1 ...

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Parys Mountain – in the Welsh language Mynydd Parys – is located south of the town of Amlwch in north east Anglesey, Wales. It is the site of a large copper mine that was extensively exploited in the late 18th century. Contents History The mountain was mined for copper ore in the early Bronze Age, as shown by sub-surface debris nearly 4,000 years old revealed during excavations in 2002. Since then access has been regained to the sealed underground workings of the Parys mine revealing further evidence for this ancient mining. Parys Mountain is thus one of the few sites in Britain where there is evidence for the prehistoric beginnings of the British metal mining industry. The 18th century miners recognised that they were following in the steps of much earlier workers, an observation that was then linked to the discovery locally of copper ingots bearing Roman inscriptions. In 1764 Charles Roe of Macclesfield was granted a 21-year lease by the Bayly family to work the mountain for copper. Rowland Pugh, a local miner, discovered the "Great Lode" on 2 March 1768 and was rewarded with a bottle of whisky and a rent-free house for his lifetime. Although the ore here was of low quality, this was more than compensated for by the fact that it occurred in two large masses close to the surface.[1] Initially ore was worked on the surface from shallow shafts, next by open-pit mining and finally underground from adits or from shafts. The ore was broken into small lumps by hand, the best ore being shipped to Lancashire or to the Lower Swansea valley in South Wales through the port of Swansea for smelting. Copper was concentrated and extracted from the remainder using kilns and furnaces on site. It was also discovered that purer metal could be obtained efficiently, although in small amounts, by its precipitation from drainage water with scrap iron in purpose-built ponds. Associated with the mines, important chemical industries were established on the Mountain based on by-products such as ochre pigments, sulphur, vitriol and alum. The processes were described by the German writer and translator, Augustin Gottfried Ludwig Lentin (1764–1823) who visited Parys Mountain in the 1790s and published his findings in Briefe uber die Insel Anglesea : vorzuglich uber das dasige Kupfer-Bergwerk und die dazu gehorigen Schmelzwerke und Fabriken (Leipzig : Crusius, 1800). Parys Penny Parys Mountain dominated the world's copper market during the 1780s, when the mine was the largest in Europe. Its rise severely damaged the mining industry in Cornwall.[1] The copper from the mine was used to sheath the admiralty's wooden ships of war in order to prevent the growth of seaweed and barnacles and to prevent boring by worms. This increased the speed and manoeuvrability of the vessels, although it is said that Parys Mountain copper was also sold to the French for use by their fleet. In response to a national shortage of small currency, the Parys Mine Company produced its own coinage between 1787 and 1793. The Parys Penny, also known as the Anglesey Penny, was used by the mine to pay workers, and also by the popululace at large. It is thought that around ten million pennies and half pennies were minted. Modern day A stream running from the mine through Amlwch saturated with copper There is a waymarked trail around the mountain, giving views of Amlwch Port to the north and the nearby Trysglwyn wind farm to the south. Those wishing to explore the historic mine levels need to contact the Parys Underground Group. Since 1988, Anglesey Mining plc, which owns the western part of the mountain has discovered resources of 6,500,000 tonnes containing 10% combined zinc, lead, copper with some silver and gold and has permits and a plan to restart mining operations at 350,000 tonnes per year. In the late 1990s, surveys of the mine's hydraulic systems revealed that a large reservoir held back by a dam in an underground working was in poor condition. An assessment made at the time considered that failure of the dam was likely and that catastrophic failure could inundate parts of Amlwch causing loss of life and substantial damage to property. An added complication was that the water in the underground reservoir was highly polluted by copper and other metals and had a very low pH. In 2003 a carefully-controlled drainage operation was carried out which dropped the water levels by 70 metres (230 ft) releasing the pressure on the dam and enabling its removal. The removal of the reservoir also gave access to many more passages and to a connection to the nearby previously inaccessible Mona Mine. The entry into these sections was filmed for the TV series Extreme Archaeology Due to the high level of soil contamination little plant life survives on or near the mountain, but there are a number of examples of copper-tolerant plants and bacteria. The bare, heavily mined landscape give the mountain a strange appearance which has been used in the filming of

MACEDON, Amphipolis. 357/6 BC. AR Tetradrachm (26mm, 14.43 g, 7h). Head of Apollo facing slightly right, wearing laurel wreath, drapery around neck / AM?-I?O-?IT-?N around raised linear square enclosing race torch; to inner right, small sphinx seated left; all within broad shallow incuse square. Lorber 42 (O23/R33) = Traite IV 1097 = G.E. Rizzo, Saggi Preliminari su L'Arte della Moneta nella Sicilia (Rome, 1938), p. 94, fig. 75, 4 = K. Regling, “Phigela, Klazomenai, Amphipolis,” ZfN 33 (1922), p. 75, 20. Good VF, attractively toned. A masterpiece of classical numismatic art. Extremely rare, only the second known from these dies, the other in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Munzkabinett (from the Lobbecke Collection). It is rare in numismatic art that the quality of engraving approaches the artistic impression of major sculpture. The present coin, along with the few other known examples of the “Parthenon Group” within the Amphipolis coinage, represents perhaps our closest approach in numismatics to the finest art of classical Athens. The Thracian city of Enna Hodoi (“Nine Roads”) on the Strymon River was conquered and re-founded by Athens in 437/6 and was re-named Amphipolis. The Athenian colonists were led by Perikles’ close friend Hagnon, son of Nikias. While Athens continued to issue coins that were the recognized standard trade currency of the eastern Mediterranean, with the traditional designs and style that had come to be widely accepted, the colony of Amphipolis was not so constrained by convention in the style of its coinage, and produced coins that come closest to representing in miniature the artistic style of Athenian sculpture of the period. The coinage of Amphipolis has long been admired by numismatists. Catherine C. Lorber published her magisterial study of the city’s coinage in 1990, building upon the work of generations of numismatists, most notably the eminent Germans Kurt Regling and Willy Schwabacher. In her corpus, Lorber was able to publish a total of 112 known tetradrachms struck during the city’s autonomous period from 370/69-354/3 BC and to organize them chronologically with great precision. The present coin falls into Lorber’s Parthenon Group (Group N), and is struck from her die combination 42, with obverse die 23 and reverse die 33. The only coin previously known from this die pairing is the Berlin specimen (Lorber 42a). One other coin is also known from the same obverse die, but a different reverse die: Lorber 43a = Leu 81 (16 May 2001), lot 158. That coin, also featured on the cover of Lorber's corpus, was described by the Leu cataloguer as “the most beautiful of all the facing-head tetradrachms of Amphipolis and one of the prettiest of all ancient Greek coins.” The present coin, despite its serene beauty, emanates from a moment of great turmoil in Amphipolis. Philip II of Macedon declared war on the city early in 357 BC. The anti-Macedonian party, in desperation, dispatched a legation to Athens to ask for help. Athens refused the offer for reasons that are not entirely clear today. Philip promptly placed Amphipolis under siege and – aided by allies within the city – breached the walls and captured the city late in 357 BC. The coins of the Parthenon Group can be precisely dated to the time of these events (Lorber p. 52-53). This series of Amphipolis’ coinage is called the Parthenon Group because the obverse head is inspired by the seated Apollo of the east frieze of the Parthenon (Lorber p. 20 and fig. 63). Lorber notes that the first two dies in the series (O20 and O21) are faithful to their sculptural prototype, but the following two dies (O22 and O23 – this obverse) are “freer and more individual” (Lorber p. 28). Lorber suggests that the reference on the coinage to a famous sculpture created by Phidias in the 430’s BC – harkening back to the city’s re-foundation by Perikles in 437/6 BC – reflects pro-Athenian feeling at a critical moment when Amphipolis desperately sought Athens’ military assistance. Philip, while he retained the Parthenon reference following his victory, introduced a subtle change to a “freer and more individual” style of Apollo head and at the same time changed the ethnic on the coinage from the Ionic form (AM?I?O?ITE?N) to the Attic form (AM?I?O?IT?N), reflecting the administrative language of the Macedonian kingdom and the language that Philip used on his royal coinage (Lorber p. 53). This coin, one of 13 known tetradrachms of the Parthenon Group and one of only five in private ownership, represents the magnificent tradition of classical Athenian art, and, at the same time, reflects the rising power of Macedon. We wish to thank Dr. Bernhard Weisser, of the Berlin Munzkabinett, for graciously enabling us to study the present coin in comparison with Berlin’s extraordinary collection of Amphipolis tetradrachms, including the only known die duplicate of this coin. CNGTriton14, 60