I have dabbled a bit with ancient Roman coins. My vast experience is with US coins so forgive my lack of knowledge here. Some of these old Roman coins I have show such exquisite detail and others do not. I am confident that this has to do with the strength and accuracy of the man swinging the hammer, but it leads me to a quizzical interest of the hammering process itself. Would a minter simply place a lump of silver or bronze on a reverse die and swing the hammer with the obverse die into it?
From what I have read on different pages of forums is that there was a hinged die set up that was clamped and struck a few times to get strong enough details. I would like to hear from someone that has studied this more to be confident.
Randy, A recent post has a video, a short one, illustrating the basic hammering process for coins. I thought it was very interesting. “Medieval coins struck for me at York”, by @calcol on Nov. 9, 2025. He visited the Jorvik Viking Center in York, England…Spark
Randy, Except for very early ancient coins, the coiners did not strike a lump of metal with the dies. Instead, the metal was melted and poured into planchet forms. Most often the forms had multiple planchet depressions connected by short shallow channels. If you look at the edge of many ancient coins, you can see where one or more channels connected. A planchet was placed on one fixed die, the coiner held the other die on the top, then swung the hammer. Some ancient coins were cast, not struck. Mike
