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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 3121473, member: 19463&quot;]You are completely ignoring the concept of <i>al marco</i>.&nbsp; No care whatsoever was taken to assure the coins weighed the same as each other but only that they produced a certain number from a certain total weight.&nbsp; Individual coins were not weighed.&nbsp; As I understand the process, slightly more than the desired weight of silver was melted and cast into the exact number of flans, lets say 128.&nbsp; Those 128 were weighed as a group and must exceed the desired total.&nbsp; Then. at random, coins were removed and scooped until the total was exactly as desired.&nbsp; The person doing this work might eyeball/select larger coins but it is not necessary for the system to work as long as you got 128 coins that weighed one unit total.&nbsp; Skilled workers would, with practice, come closer in the first place so fewer coins would need to be adjusted.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>You also assume that the mint was a commercial facility converting metal into coins for customers.&nbsp; This is not supported by the Roman system where the metal was supplied by the State or the moneyer.&nbsp; Metal removed from the first batch would be added to the second melt with enough extra to assure the total would be exceeded (never undershot which would void the melt).&nbsp; All the metal in the building belonged to the same owner so it made little difference whether the total was close or way over except for the extra work required and the people doing the work had the most to gain out of doing it with as few adjustments as possible.&nbsp; Also note that there are coins with deeper and more shallow adjustments controlled by the angle of the tool used to make the scoop.&nbsp; I propose that the coin with a very shallow scoop with many stutters was done as the batch weight was very near the desired total while deeper ones could be done when they needed to remove a lot.&nbsp; The smallest adjustments might well be erased completely when the flan was struck. </p><p><br /></p><p>deep with few stutters</p><p>[ATTACH=full]794356[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>shallow with many stutters</p><p>[ATTACH=full]794357[/ATTACH] </p><p>Rarely (I really want one) a coin would be grabbed a second time and get a second adjustment on the other side.&nbsp; It is common for deep scoops to show a flat, weak area on the opposite side which is not the same thing as a double scoop. </p><p>[ATTACH=full]794358[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>I claim no expertise here save that gained reading the Stannard papers.&nbsp; This process was used for a relatively short time by a few moneyers and probably was ended as more work than it was worth or when they discovered that edge clipping worked as well without leaving scars.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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