A great deal of research in inorganic and organometallic chemistry is devoted to investigation of self-assembly processes, which spontaneously lead to formation of complex multimetallic supramolecular entities from relatively simple building blocks under mild conditions. The resulting wellordered species are of significant interest due to their fascinating structural characteristics and promising optical, electronic, or catalytic properties. [1,2] In most cases these species are prepared by a metal-ligand coordination-based strategy. However, group 11 metal ions tend to exhibit effective noncovalent metal-metal interactions, which often complicate the assembly processes and may result in formation of polymers or networks, catenanes, and polymetallic clusters. [2, 3] Hence, it is difficult to predict the structural topology of coinage metal aggregates, and controlling the system organization at the molecular or nanoscale level is a major synthetic challenge.One of the approaches to high-nuclearity coinage metal clusters is an elegant anion-templated synthesis of homometallic silver alkynyl cage compounds, which were shown to incorporate halides, [4] carbonate, [5] chromate, [6] and even polyoxometalates. [7] However, this approach is very little studied and the assembly processes of the d 10 heterometallic compounds in the presence of coordinating anions have never been investigated.In the course of our studies on coinage metal clusters [8][9][10] we . [9] This preparative route, which eventually involves cleavage of C À Cl bonds of CH 2 Cl 2 molecules as a source of chloride, was quite ineffective (yield of < 20 %). Alternatively, it was found that treatment of a stoichiometric reaction mixture with Ag + and Cl À ions results in rather fast and nearly quantitative formation of 1 (Scheme 1).The bromide-and iodide-containing congeners (2 and 3) were obtained analogously, though some addition of CHBr 3 and MeI, respectively, was necessary to decrease possible halide exchange with solvent (CH 2 Cl 2 ). Complexes 1-3 were characterized by 1 H and 31 P NMR spectroscopy. An X-ray diffraction study on 3 revealed its structure in the solid state (Figure 1). [11] The molecule consists of the heterometallic cluster [Au 9 Ag 12 (C 2 Ph) 18 I 3 ] surrounded by a cationic "belt" [Au 3 (P 3 P) 3 ] 3+ . Even though the general structural motif-a bimetallic cluster [Autriangle-has been described before, [12,13] the peculiarity of 3 resides in the central "axis" of three I À ions, which effectively directed the framework aggregation process and stabilized the resulting metal core. The IÀAg distances of 2.8330(14)-3.0173(13) suggest a significant contribution of a conventional bonding between the halide and metal ions. The AuÀ Ag contacts vary significantly from 2.7844(11) to 3.3472(11) , the longest of which involve silver ions bound to iodide ions. The average Au-Ag distance (3.02 ) and the AuÀAu bonds between the central cluster and the external "belt" (2.8813(6)-2.9055(6) ) are not exceptional and agree with the previously re...