Die matches and rarity?

I own common coins - so this question is just for me to understand a little better what I read here so I can attempt to process it.

I do enjoy when someone finds a die match and shares it here.. I think the digital tools to find matches are awesome! From my limited knowledge these are my assumptions (I am posting this to be corrected):

-If you find a die match this reinforces that fact that the coin is genuine
-The "cool" factor (not to be minimized) that you have obtained a coin that was struck at a very similar time (hours/days?) to another coin in your collection (or another collection/publication).. that in itself is pretty amazing.
-I have also seen "rarity" placed on coins because they are NOT a die match? This confuses me a bit - if this is the case the total # of examples for this coin design (from any dies) must be extremely low... so all are rare?

I guess I struggle with the term "rare".. not a term I have enough experience to use with any confidence... any clarification on what determines a coin to be "rare" is appreciated and any information on die matches would also be nice....

As always - thank you!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

It seems contradictory, but it's not.

The rarer a coin is, the easier it is to find a die match. For a very rare type for which only one pair of dies exists, all specimens are die matches. It can be quite difficult to find a specimen at all, but then it is automatically a die match.

With common coins, which means many different dies, you may have to look at hundreds of examples until you find a die match. This is much more time consuming.

 

Interesting topic, I found what I origanally thought was a rough temple ( I actually had a thread on it....https://www.cointalk.com/threads/rough-temple.282322/) but have since found an obverse and reverse die match.
First the die match in CNG archives...

352, Lot: 430. Estimate $100.
Sold for $80. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Antoninus Pius. AD 138-161. Æ Dupondius (26mm, 10.66 g, 11h). Rome mint. Struck AD 159. Radiate head right / TEMPLVM DIV AVG RES[T], octastyle temple within which are the seated figures of Divus Augustus and Livia. RIC III 1017. VF, dark green patina, surfaces a bit rough.

And mine also a CNG purchace.
Antoninus Pius. AD 138-161. Æ Dupondius (27mm, 10.58 g, 11h). Rome mint. Struck AD 159. Radiate head right / TEMPLVM DIV AVG REST, octastyle temple within which are the seated figures of Divus Augustus and Livia. RIC III 1017. VF, dark brown surfaces with touches of green, some pitting and minor smoothing.

 

I have two Sestertii that were only struck with one pair of dies (both featured on Wildwinds):

- Hadrian Sestertius RIC 703 k, three known
(Nr.2 is from a 1931 Ratto sale, Nr. 3 in the Bibliotheque National in Paris):



- Salonina Göbl MIR 490y (not in RIC), two known:


This Sestertius of Gordian II, RIC 7 (7 known, mine on Wildwinds) was also struck from one obverse die only, but several reverse dies (how many can you spot?):

 

I have a two-step approach to assessing rarity -- counting other examples at online databases and doing die-studies:

1) I look up examples in all of the online databases of which I'm aware, including records of previous sales and of museum holdings. These are: Wildwinds, OCRE, The ANS collection, The Coin Project, Coryssa, acsearchinfo, CoinArchives, Tantalus, the British Museum, CNG's archives, and V coins. Depending on the issue, I may also search ISEGRIM, MER/RIC, RPC online, or the Gallienus websites. Occasionally, I am unable to find another specimen of a coin apart from Cohen citing its presence in the French national collection. A coin is truly rare in that case.

2) If the coin appears rare (only half a dozen examples total among all the sites), I will do a die-study. If a coin appears to be struck with only a few different dies, then it's likely to have been in limited production or that only one or two hoards have ever been found containing it. For example, only nine examples of this coin with a right-facing bust appear in any reference, printed or online; they were produced by four different obverse dies and only a single reverse die. The denarius shown at the bottom of this post appears in only one other online source, the British Museum Collection, and it's a reverse die match, suggesting production by a single aberrant reverse die. There were only four other examples of this coin, struck by two obverse dies and two reverse dies.

The combination of very few examples online and produced by only a few different dies suggests true rarity.

 

This thread is a bit too ancient for Meow's pedestrian numismatic experience. But Meow has a had a sort of similar question in Meow's furry head. So Meow thought to try and ask to see what folks might know.
Meow is wondering what one might expect in a new roll of pennies. How many die matches would be/could be there? Is there a chance all 50 would be from the same set of dies? Or a mix of how many? Meow is hoping to find a particular strike of a recent penny, and was wondering if it was worth breaking open BU rolls to find it. Meow would hate to break open many rolls and find not a single one.

 

LSD is a hell of a drug, Meow. It's not the type of thing a kitty should be messing with.

 

1) "If you find a die match this reinforces that fact that the coin is genuine"
Well-chosen words. It does not guarantee authenticity, but it does contribute reinforcement to genuineness. (After all, obviously two fakes from the same dies would match.)

2) "The 'cool' factor (not to be minimized) that you have obtained a coin that was struck at a very similar time (hours/days?) to another coin in your collection (or another collection/publication).. that in itself is pretty amazing."
Amazing? YES! Cool? Absolutely! Although there is not necessarily as close of a temporal connection as hours or even days.

3) "I have also seen "rarity" placed on coins because they are NOT a die match? This confuses me a bit - if this is the case the total # of examples for this coin design (from any dies) must be extremely low... so all are rare?"
It seems to me a coin being declared as 'rare' due to the fact that no die-match could be found would only be appropriate if the type itself was 'rare' on its own merit. IOW: The total number of extant examples should be THE sole determinant of a coin's rarity/scarcity/commonness. (Unless I'm missing something, which, alas, is always an extant possibility and not rare at all.)

I sold some of my die-matched pairs. In part that was because the novelty wore off, but also because I realized I'd rather own two separate ancient coins than two of the same type. I still have two matches though. Both are common types.

Here is an obverse die-match only, (Herod Agrippa I, Hendin 1244).

And this is a double-die match, (Augustus denarius, RIC I 107).

 

I'm no expert at this sort of thing, but I believe a generic answer would go something like this: Modern pennies are machine-struck from hubbed dies. Therefore, it would be difficult to find die-matches since presumably every coin struck would be identical. The exception would be when there is an error - as with the 1955 double-die cent. That is an example, perhaps, when a die match could be made, because only one die was made with this error.

As for non-error coins, presumably at the microscopic level you could die match a roll of pennies, but I can't see that being all that much fun.

Ancient coins were not hubbed (or at least the vast majority of them weren't). Each individual die was hand-engraved, including the lettering. Not a very efficient way to run a mint, but manpower was cheap (and a lot of it slaves) and so that's the way they did it. Each working die had its own characteristics that are often quite obvious, and therefore can be "die matched."

Hope that helps!

 

I'm the proud owner of a few die-matched Indo Sassanians. Curiously, even among very rare types, die matches are uncommon if not nonexistent, indicating that regardless of how many were originally produced, the majority of these coins were regularly recoined. I'll need to double check, but I don't think Maheshwari noted a single die-matched pair in his study of nearly 2,000 of these coins; even among coins from the same hoard of a homogenous type.

Die match 1:
Overse die match; not sure of reverse
Same hoard (Same seller, same day)


Die match 2:
Double match
Possibly same hoard (different sellers, two months apart)

(I think @Spaniard has one of these too - curious to know if his is also a match!)

I have a couple that are die matched to examples in Maheshwari's book; however I haven't taken side by sides yet.

 

Meow gets what you say. Meow is looking for examples of an new penny error that Meow has found in local change. So Meow was wondering if Meow should open BU rolls of those pennies. Meow has yet to find an ender like it, or in any of the few rolls Meow did open. So maybe if Meow finds one, Meow finds fifty??? Anyway, thanks for your input. By the way all, did you guys notice the rude remark to Meow was made bay a Dog?????? Why cant Dogs just accept the fact, that Cats are just cooler beings? And by attacking Cats, it does not rub off on them and make Dogs cool by any means.

 

Who left the cat door open?

 

Hi Julius, I took a look and found at least one Gordian II of this type that is not a die match (Künker 62 #663)

 

I love this thread! For sure have to watch this for more information.

 

Hi Ras,
the Künker coin you mentioned is a misattributed Sestertius of Gordian I. There are other auction houses that made the same mistake (see Jean Elsen 12.03.2016, # 260 = https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=4172535 ; HD Rauch 01.10.2004, # 529 = https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=190454 for this type alone) of attributing portraits with the hair in front of the laurel wreath worn (or tooled) away to Gordian II, despite them otherwise having the features of Gordian I or even being die matches to his coins. Victoria it is one of the common reverses for Sestertii of Gordian I (46 cited by Banti) but very rare for Gordian II (3 cited by Banti).
David Sear has confirmed that there is just this single obverse die for the Victoria Sestertii of Gordian II and that he knows of no other than the seven specimens of RIC 7 that I pictured above (Dupriez 07.04.2013 =Heritage 07.01.2019 = Banti 6; CNG 15.09.2010, CNG 15.06.2005; Spink 30.11.2006 = Heritage 10.04.2014; British Museum = RIC 7; Naples Museum = BMCRE 29; Peus 22.04.2010).

This would suggest that there must be dozens of misattributed Sestertii of the Gordiani Africani in the hands of collectors which would make a scientific die study a useful thing to do (like it has been done for Pertinax and Didius Julianus by Woodward and for Macrinus by Curtis Clay).

 

I would have to agree with @Roman Collector and @shanxi here.
If one can only find a handful of examples of a coin across all available sources, and in that small number of coins there are also die matches, this was likely a very limited production issue.
Keep in mind there is a difference between rarity now (how many survived/ have been found) and rarity then (how many struck to begin with).

 

On second look I you're right about the Künker piece, good call! However, check out CNG 63 #1491 and Egger 43 #1652. Die matching isn't any fun for me but the CNG coin doesn't look like an obv match.

No matter how eminent the expert is don't ever take someone's word as an absolute. You have at your fingertips better tools than Sear and every other pre-21st century numismatist could have dreamed of. We're all human and, well, errare humanum est :- )

Rasiel

 

This is an excellent point. If a now rare coin is known from few dies, it was probably made in small quantities but if there are only a few coins but almost as many dies, we have to look for a reason that so few survived. The obvious answer would be that the issue was recalled and melted in great quantity but we always have to allow for the fact that there must have been coin types that once existed in quantity but failed to have survived for more random reasons.

Of the roughly 100 EID MAR denarii known, how many dies were used?

 

@Julius Germanicus and @Suarez make two important points:

1. You can use die-matching to attribute coins as to issuing authority or to reconstruct inscriptions and such.

2. Although authorities such as David Sear carry a lot of weight, they are not infallible and you can occasionally prove they made a mistake.

This thread about Roman provincial issues of Zeugma illustrates both of these points.