Are you spitballing like me or is this your field? Because you’d need to know the percentage of the metal present in the coin to weigh it; gold and silver are too soft be pure. That introduces problems of debasement, a coin from an earlier minting might have a higher content than a later printing, and multiply that by all the different city-states, and you have a potential headache.
It is not my field, so don’t take it too serious. But I think I’m those times it was not doable for most people to test metals for purity, so that wouldn’t have influenced it much unless it became noticable by eye (or biting)
Are you spitballing like me or is this your field? Because you’d need to know the percentage of the metal present in the coin to weigh it; gold and silver are too soft be pure. That introduces problems of debasement, a coin from an earlier minting might have a higher content than a later printing, and multiply that by all the different city-states, and you have a potential headache.
It is not my field, so don’t take it too serious. But I think I’m those times it was not doable for most people to test metals for purity, so that wouldn’t have influenced it much unless it became noticable by eye (or biting)