To test this ourselves, we used heavy duty shears and a metal file to trim the edges of our replica coins. Because our replicas have a different metal composition than official siliquae<\/em> which are more than 97% pure silver, they reacted differently to clipping. The replicas proved to be more brittle and cut very easily while genuine siliquae would have been far more robust and less prone to snapping.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, this was an interesting activity that allowed us to compare our clipping attempts and think more critically about how the practice was carried out. We also noticed that shears left faint indents on our replicas and these faint indents are sometimes present on official siliquae<\/em>.<\/p>\n We kept a small bag of our clippings and displayed it alongside a row of our clipped replicas during two recent museum workshops. The clippings caught the attention of lots of visitors sparked interesting conversations about the history and purpose of coin clipping.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/files\/2026\/07\/20260715_092117-1.jpg\")