A wonderful, if basic, demonstration of coin manufacturing

Check it out.

 

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Seen the video before, but cool to see again.

 

Nice! The basic steps are similar to a lot of cast products molded today.

 

This video is an old chestnut, and it is indeed fun to watch. For my tastes, they could have stretched it out to an hour and shown all the intricate details of the process!

 

A couple of disagreements. I do not think we have ever seen evidence of casting sprues in denari, or even LRB, so I highly doubt the flans were prepared in this exact manner.

Secondly, a friend of mine strikes coins for medieval festivals, and has made hundreds of dies and struck tens of thousands of coins by hand. He said that for denari/LRB/medieval thickness coins there is absolutely no need to heat up the flans. Only very thick coins, especially of a copper alloy, like sestertii need to be preheated in order to strike up. Even a sestertius can be struck cold, but he said it puts undue wear on the dies and makes them crack early.

 

I agree with Chris concerning denarii, but plenty of LRB can be found with sprues...

 

I agree some eastern mints at times can have sprues. Maybe they simply removed them better by then. I was thinking of many provincial and greek coins with obvious sprues. Seems like the same mints who made them also made LRB with sprues.

 

It would seem Western mints were more careful about filing them down. You're right, they are less common from places like Trier and Lugdunum, come to think of it.

 

Is it really that important whether sprues were used? Didn't they scoop out excess metal to adjust weight?
Sprues were later used in 2 sided casting for an entirely different purpose. It only became a necessity when they were casting details directly.

 

I've seen that on RR denarii. Does it exist in imperial issues? I've never come across scoops or sprues on imperial silver. I'm guessing the metal was poured into a measure, then that was poured into individual, unconnected molds. If a flan came out badly, it was simply remelted.

They should have used bronze in the video. Chris's point is valid - this was probably not a technique used for silver coins.

 

Naw, when they finally find out the secret, they will find that they used powder-metal injection molding on 250 ton presses (die-molds cut in Germany). Electricity supplied by rapidly running slaves that were training for the upcoming gladiatorial games. Eezy-peezy explanation guys!

 

That, or aliens.

 

Wow ... it's not cool when the dude that works at CNG is showing us how he makes his coins!!

 

lol

 

It is almost always a mistake to say anything about the way 'they' did anything. Ancient coins covered such a wide range of times and places that individuals would always develop ways to do things 'their way'. I agree that the need for sprues is not there for open pouring blanks. Scoops came and went during the Republican period. That does not mean that some minter in some place did not try it later but I have not seen one on an Imperial. There are coins struck on cut pieces as well as poured blanks and a huge number of variations on the basic idea. Were denarii poured openly as shown here? Some may have been but open pour blanks often leave signs of their own like we see on Alexandrian drachms with one side flatter than the other. It is great to study these things but 'proving' something is limited to one mint at one time and maybe only for one workshop. Assumptions for general truth require care.

 

is this a chunk of metal scooped out of the flan?
Honestly I had never paid attention to time frame of this practice. I think you're right though, they appeared more on earlier silver coins.

 

That looks like post mint damage.

 

This thread on FORVM has some good discussion on the topic of flan making. It's something I'm very interested in because within RR bronzes you see various flan casting techniques used, sometimes multiple techniques within a single moneyer's denominations.