An Astounding Brockage

Under Tetricus, Salus is holding a RUDDER. I’s a SCEPTRE on Victorinus’ antoniniani. One exception: Tetricus used the sceptre on denarii and aurei. I can assure you my brockage is not one of them .So 100% sure it’s a Victorinus.

 

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You know I love my 'errors'.

My opinion: The vast majority of earlier brockages are obverse but starting around the time of the Gallic Empire, it is easier to find reverse brockages. The Titus bothers me. Are most Flavian brockages reverse? I don't have one. A brockage is caused when a coin sticks in the top die and was not cleared before the next coin was struck making that coin a brockage. It is more likely that a coin stuck in the top die would not be noticed so, since the top die was usually the reverse, the brockages would be obverse. Later it seems that the style dies was changed making it easier to produce reverse brockages. I tend to think this change was the use of pincher dies but I can't prove it. Also, more unusual are brockages of heavy coins since they are more likely to fall clear than lighter ones.

Republicans seem more common than Imperials.

I only have one early Roman AE brockage and it is a barbarous Claudius.


Some rulers are easier to find as a brockage than others. Septimius Severus is not easy but I could not pass up this one from 'Emesa'.


My examples of a reverse brockages are Gallic from a junk lot of five I bought from Frank Robinson in 1997. I still have three. I sold the others here on CT through one of our dealer members.

I believe this is probably Tetricus I but the obverse is such a mess I'm hesitant even to call it a brockage.


My best reverse is this Tetricus II / Spes Avgg.


I believe this one is Victorinus / Comes. Agree?


Of course all here should know by now that I will be showing one of my favorite coins, a restruck brockage of Magnentius showing one obverse and three reverses (2 normal and one incuse). I really wish any of you that have one of these would post it. For years I believed that all coins claiming to be restruck brockages were just mistaken ID's of clashed die coins but this one turned up and proved me wrong. There must be more but where are they?


Finally, I know I show it all the time, I want to see other coins like the one below. When a brockage is struck the coin that was stuck in the die must have been affected in a negative way. This Septimius Severus is flatter than many and the obverse is mushy while the reverse is especially clear. I believe this coin stuck in a die and produced a brockage of the type. Since this is not a particularly common obverse, I have always hoped that a matching brockage would show up but that kind of luck faces odds greater than winning the lottery. If my theory is correct, I would expect the brockage to have some detail on the edge by the face (brockage left) but, since the lettering behind the head is not flattened, I would expect the brockage to show no detail on that side (brockage right). Not only do I want a brockage of this obverse but I am asking for one with detail on the correct side to fit my theory and be the coin once struck with my coin. The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are even lower, 1 in 302.6 million. I'll place my odds of finding 'my' coin to be 1 in the sum of those two, 1 in 594.8 million. Prove me wrong. I do have a birthday coming up and would appreciate a nice coin of this nature.

 

One in a million. Glad for you

 

Apparently so!

 

Not at all for the reasons you mentioned - they would be much more noticeable during production than an obverse brockage. The Titus is the only Flavian reverse brockage I've ever come across.

 

My most unusual brockage is nowhere near as amazing as Doug's fabulous Magnentius, but it is still kinda neat, and certainly rare:

It's a partial brockage of a Saturninus denarius, whereby some other coin (the previously struck one? not necessarily) was resting, off-centre and reverse up, between the blank flan and the anvil die when this coin was struck.

While partial brockages aren't that rare for modern coins produced by automation, they are decidedly rare for ancients. I can find only 10 clear cases on acsearch (2 Celtic, 3 Republican, 3 Imperial, 1 Roman provincial, and 1 Byzantine.) Compare that to 800 hits on "denarius brockage" alone.

Question: given how common whole brockages are, why are partial brockages so rare?
Theory: it's far more likely for an interfering off-centre coin to be noticed than a stuck, centred coin. That wouldn't apply to automated production, which is why modern ones are much more common.

I just did some work to make this more than anecdotal. Of that 800 hits for "denarius brockage" on acsearch, there are:

Approx. 600 Republican: 184 years = 3.26 per year
59 Augustus - Nerva: 125 years = 0.47 per year
23 Trajan to Pertinax: 95 years = 0.24 per year
82 Septimius Severus to Gordian III: 51 years = 1.61 per year
(the remainder were excluded; not denarii, or duplicates, or whatever)

To really know the brockage rate we'd have to know the total production (and survival rate), of course, which we don't. But going by Harl's Coinage in the Roman Economy production generally increased throughout this period, so the brockage rate for the Republic is clearly a lot higher.

Clearly production standards must be one factor. I wonder if silver quality is another - the higher quality and therefore softer silver in the Republic may have been more likely to stick to the die. (Of course gold is even softer, but naturally they'd be more careful in producing the small mintages of gold.) Then again, the lowest silver quality is in the last group, but inflation meant production was a lot higher too, and quality control worse.

Interestingly, there are only 100 hits for "antoninianus brockage." Of those 100, only 13 fall in the period from Caracalla to Valerian!

 

Congratulations, David! What a fantastic example of a rare type of brockage, and in your collecting sphere too!

 

Have you noticed how much circulation wear there is on the examples in this thread? It's obvious that the citizenry didn't care and went about spending them. They weren't pulled from circulation as curiosities or collectables.