Precious metal in the context of "Native silver"

The Maurya Empire was a geographically extensive Iron Age historical power in South Asia with its power base in Magadha. Founded by Chandragupta Maurya around c. 320 BCE, it existed in loose-knit fashion until 185 BCE. The primary sources for the written records of the Mauryan times are partial records of the lost history of Megasthenes in Roman texts of several centuries later; and the Edicts of Ashoka. Archaeologically, the period of Mauryan rule in South Asia falls into the era of Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW).

Through military conquests and diplomatic treaties, Chandragupta Maurya defeated the Nanda dynasty and extended his suzerainty as far westward as Afghanistan below the Hindu Kush and as far south as the northern Deccan; however, beyond the core Magadha area, the prevailing levels of technology and infrastructure limited how deeply his rule could penetrate society. During the rule of Chandragupta's grandson, Ashoka (ca. 268–232 BCE), the empire briefly controlled the major urban hubs and arteries of the subcontinent excepting the deep south. The Mauryan capital (what is today Patna) was located in Magadha; the other core regions were Taxila in the northwest; Ujjain in the Malwa Plateau; Kalinga on the Bay of Bengal coast; and the precious metal-rich lower Deccan Plateau. Outside the core regions, the empire's geographical extent was dependent on the loyalty of military commanders who controlled the armed cities scattered within it.

Silver is a chemical element; it has symbol Ag (from Latin argentum 'silver') and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. Silver is found in the Earth's crust in the pure, free elemental form ("native silver"), as an alloy with gold and other metals, and in minerals such as argentite and chlorargyrite. Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, gold, lead, and zinc refining.

Silver has long been valued as a precious metal, commonly sold and marketed beside gold and platinum. Silver metal is used in many bullion coins, sometimes alongside gold: while it is more abundant than gold, it is much less abundant as a native metal. Its purity is typically measured on a per-mille basis; a 94%-pure alloy is described as "0.940 fine". As one of the seven metals of antiquity, silver has had an enduring role in most human cultures. In terms of scarcity, silver is the most abundant of the big three precious metals—platinum, gold, and silver—among these, platinum is the rarest with around 139 troy ounces of silver mined for every one ounce of platinum.

A coin is a small object, usually round and flat, used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order to facilitate trade. They are most often issued by a government. Coins often have images, numerals, or text on them. The faces of coins or medals are sometimes called the obverse and the reverse, referring to the front and back sides, respectively. The obverse of a coin is commonly called heads, because it often depicts the head of a prominent person, and the reverse is known as tails.

The first metal coins – invented in the ancient Greek world and disseminated during the Hellenistic period – were precious metal–based, and were invented in order to simplify and regularize the task of measuring and weighing bullion (bulk metal) carried around for the purpose of transactions. They carried their value within the coins themselves, but the stampings also induced manipulations, such as the clipping of coins to remove some of the precious metal.

A store of value is any commodity or asset that would normally retain purchasing power into the future and is the function of the asset that can be saved, retrieved and exchanged at a later time, and be predictably useful when retrieved.

The most common store of value in modern times has been money, currency, or a commodity like a precious metal or financial capital. The point of any store of value is risk management due to a stable demand for the underlying asset.

Commodity money is money whose value comes from a commodity of which it is made. Commodity money consists of objects having value or use in themselves (intrinsic value) as well as their value in buying goods.This is in contrast to representative money, which has no intrinsic value but represents something of value such as gold or silver, for which it can be exchanged, and fiat money, which derives its value from having been established as money by government regulation.

Examples of commodities that have been used as media of exchange include precious metals and stones, grain, animal parts (such as beaver pelts), tobacco, fuel, and others. Sometimes several types of commodity money were used together, with fixed relative values, in various commodity valuation or price system economies.

A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Modern goldsmiths mainly specialize in jewelry-making but historically, they have also made silverware, platters, goblets, decorative and serviceable utensils, and ceremonial or religious items.

Goldsmiths must be skilled in forming metal through filing, soldering, sawing, forging, casting, and polishing. The trade has very often included jewelry-making skills, as well as the very similar skills of the silversmith. Traditionally, these skills had been passed along through apprenticeships; more recently jewelry arts schools, specializing in teaching goldsmithing and a multitude of skills falling under the jewelry arts umbrella, are available. Many universities and junior colleges also offer goldsmithing, silversmithing, and metal arts fabrication as a part of their fine arts curriculum.

The fineness of a precious metal object (coin, bar, jewelry, etc.) represents the weight of fine metal therein, in proportion to the total weight which includes alloying base metals and any impurities. Alloy metals are added to increase hardness and durability of coins and jewelry, alter colors, decrease the cost per weight, or avoid the cost of high-purity refinement. For example, copper is added to the precious metal silver to make a more durable alloy for use in coins, housewares and jewelry. Coin silver, which was used for making silver coins in the past, contains 90% silver and 10% copper, by mass. Sterling silver contains 92.5% silver and 7.5% of other metals, usually copper, by mass.

Various ways of expressing fineness have been used and two remain in common use: millesimal fineness expressed in units of parts per 1,000 and karats or carats used only for gold. Karats measure the parts per 24, so that 18 karat = 18⁄24 = 75% gold and 24 karat gold is considered 100% gold.

Billon (/ˈbɪlən/) is an alloy of a precious metal (most commonly silver, but also gold) with a majority base metal content (such as copper). It is used chiefly for making coins, medals, and token coins.

The word comes from the French bille, which means 'log'.

Bullion is non-ferrous metal that has been refined to a high standard of elemental purity. The term is ordinarily applied to bulk metal used in the production of coins and especially to precious metals such as gold and silver. It comes from the Anglo-Norman term for a melting-house where metal was refined, and earlier from French bouillon, "boiling". Although precious metal bullion is no longer used to make coins for general circulation, it continues to be held as an investment with a reputation for stability in periods of economic uncertainty. To assess the purity of gold bullion, the centuries-old technique of fire assay is still employed, together with modern spectroscopic instrumentation, to accurately determine its quality.

Bullion is sometimes contrasted with specie, the latter being coin made of bullion (or synonymously, bullion coin). Thus understood, bullion refers to precious metal kept in forms other than coin, namely bars, ingots, or plates, including regional and historical variants such as grivnas in Eastern Europe or sycees in China.