A Licinius I follis, bought at a fair today. My first late Roman, first follis, first mis-strike, and cheapest ever purchase. From the price, I assume these are very common. But I like it. I’d love to see others. And how did they happen? Was it simply coin stuck to die and was partially struck another time?
That sounds likely, although when my brain is more awake I want to think about it more. (might be a day or two before my brain has recovered from the week )
The obverse looks like initially a double strike. It's so complex that it might possibly also involve some kind of loose or broken die. I advise you to try posting this coin in the Coin Error section. They might have an opinion.
I have a Constantius II that is struck half off the flan, a really weird example of an FTR type. Somebody at the mint was drunk or dozing off. I'll try to take a photo of it today. Right now it is in my old mayonnaise jar of forlorn LRB's.
I'm trying to work this out and am running into problems with the attribution (not surprising since I'm not fluent with LRBs). Using Tesorillo's pages, the reverse is Type 52, [IOVI CON]SERVATORI, with Jupiter standing left, wearing a chlamys, sceptre in left hand, thunderbolt in right hand (I think I see a thunderbolt on your coin rather than Victory or a patera). However, the mint and field marks are wrong as well as the obverse legend. Maybe I'm wrong about the thunderbolt and he's holding Victory or a patera, with eagle left at his feet (Type 53). That brings the correct field marks into play but the mint and obverse legend are still wrong. Another Tesorillo page lists obverse legends by ruler and that page shows Type 52 associated with the OP coin's obverse legend, IMP LIC LICINIU[S P F AVG], so maybe the page for type 52 has a mistake or is incomplete? Anyway... maybe that isn't the the thing to focus on, so I took a look at the overstruck bit of legend on the obverse, expecting to find that is part of the obverse legend or, if a flip over double strike, the reverse legend. It doesn't look right for either type of overstrike . I'm seeing "VSD_" Mirror imaging the bit in Photoshop to "correct" for a possible flipover makes it look like "_ORV". Neither of those fragments are a letter sequence found on either side of this coin. Stumped for the moment. Time to take a break and come back to the puzzle later
What you are seeing there is "VS PF" from the obverse inscription. It's not that hard to see what happened. After striking the coin correctly it was to be removed. However, it slipped and fell back into the anvil die still face down but rotated about 90 degrees counterclockwise and mostly off the range for a strike. The hammer die was brought down on this and caught the small part that was still protruding over the anvil die. The obverse held, as the hammer die slid to the left on the flan in the second strike and smeared its image on the reverse. Chances are pretty good that this wreaked havoc on both dies which would have clashed if another flan was not at least partially in place. Somebody got a good cursing out over this one you can bet.
The vast majority of ancient coins would be classified as errors if we used modern coin standards but this one actually makes the grade as an ancient error. The way I see it, the cause was not inattentive drunkeness bur working at breakneck speed to avoid being beaten for being a lazy slave by mint officials who were trying to crank out a million coins a month. After a coin was struck, it was removed from the dies and replaced with a new blank which would be struck by the hammerman as quickly as possible, If the worker tasked with removing and replacing fumbled a coin and did not clear it in rhythm, I can see where the hammerman may have already started another downstroke so the uncleared coin would get hit again but not properly aligned. What else got hit in the confusion, we can only imagine. In the 1930's, my mother was a nurse in a Chrysler drop forge plant. In the 1950's more than one old man came up to me and waved a stubby hand remnant at me and said, "Your mother cut off my fingers!" They were not unhappy. My mother was good at what she did. It took a few times before I realized that part. I suspect the slaves who held the dies and changed the blanks would have liked to have had my mother nearby when they had a bad day. Their stubs were probably cauterized and they were sent back to work. When I see a coin like this one, I think of this story. Industrial safety has changed a lot since the 1930's when men with missing fingers were considered clumsy rather than victims. I suspect the word for them in the time of Licinius was a step less pleasant. Mine is a Tetricus. I love errors and have shown quite a few here over the years but most collectors consider them defective and worth less than normal coins unless they are spectacular. There is a lot to learn about how coins were made from the evidence presented when things went wrong. Had we been there, I suspect we could have learned some vocabulary in these mint events using words they did not teach you in high school Latin.
I have a 3 faced, I believe, Constantius II. And it doesn't appear to be any kind of error. You can hold it 3 different ways and make out 3 faces for 3 strikes!
Here's another example of a striking error on the same coin type for Licinius from the same mint as on the OP coin. It's just a little more extreme: Same type of error? What do you think?
Minting Boo-Boos... RR M Furius ERROR DOUBLE-STRIKE AR Den119 BC Janus Trophy Carnyx S 156 Cr 281-1 RR AR Denarius ERROR BROCKAGE ROMA Helmeted Head-Incuse and reverse of obverse - 2nd-1st C BCE RR Clodius Pulcher T Mallius AR Den 111-110 BCE ERROR Flipover Double-Strike Roma Triga Cr 299-1b S 176 This was a purposeful overstrike to re-use captured enemy coinage. However it was sold to me, by an Ancients Dealer, as a Januform Roman Bronze... WAY to light and smaller diameter to be correct. RR Anon AE Sextans-Hieron II Error Overstrike 214-212 BCE S1211 Cr69-6 Cool overstrike of Mercury over Hieron II to make a Januform. About 5g, 20mm I should post these in the Errors Forum, then have them offer me MILLIONS of Dollars.
Wow, the OP and other errors in this thread are almost as impressive as the ones you find on Byzantines. Here's one of those I'm looking forward to receiving from @Valentinian (Sear 1182 overstruck on 1014): And here's the Gallienus flipover I showed recently: Finally, a brockage version of the OP error:
