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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Severus Alexander, post: 8249908, member: 84744&quot;]My most unusual brockage is nowhere near as amazing as Doug&#039;s fabulous Magnentius, but it is still kinda neat, and certainly rare:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1453081[/ATTACH]</p><p>It&#039;s a <i>partial</i> 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.</p><p><br /></p><p>While partial brockages aren&#039;t that rare for modern coins produced by automation, they are decidedly rare for ancients.&nbsp; I can find only 10 clear cases on acsearch (2 Celtic, 3 Republican, 3 Imperial, 1 Roman provincial, and 1 Byzantine.)&nbsp; Compare that to 800 hits on &quot;denarius brockage&quot; alone.</p><p><br /></p><p>Question: given how common whole brockages are, why are partial brockages so rare? </p><p>Theory: it&#039;s far more likely for an interfering off-centre coin to be noticed than a stuck, centred coin.&nbsp; That wouldn&#039;t apply to automated production, which is why modern ones are much more common.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I just did some work to make this more than anecdotal.&nbsp; Of that 800 hits for &quot;denarius brockage&quot; on acsearch, there are:</p><p><br /></p><p>Approx. <b>600</b> Republican: 184 years = <b>3.26 per year</b></p><p><b>59</b> Augustus - Nerva: 125 years = <b>0.47 per year</b></p><p><b>23</b> Trajan to Pertinax: 95 years = <b>0.24 per year</b></p><p><b>82</b> Septimius Severus to Gordian III: 51 years = <b>1.61 per year</b></p><p>(the remainder were excluded; not denarii, or duplicates, or whatever)</p><p><br /></p><p>To really know the brockage rate we&#039;d have to know the total production (and survival rate), of course, which we don&#039;t.&nbsp; But going by Harl&#039;s <i>Coinage in the Roman Economy</i> production generally increased throughout this period, so the brockage rate for the Republic is clearly a lot higher.</p><p><br /></p><p>Clearly production standards must be one factor.&nbsp; 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&#039;d be more careful in producing the small mintages of gold.)&nbsp; Then again, the lowest silver quality is in the last group, but inflation meant production was a lot higher too, and quality control worse.</p><p><br /></p><p>Interestingly, there are only 100 hits for &quot;antoninianus brockage.&quot;&nbsp; Of those 100, only 13 fall in the period from Caracalla to Valerian![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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