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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 1264077, member: 19463&quot;]My recent interest in medieval Indian coins pointed out to me a basic difference in the way &#039;numismatists&#039; can work.&nbsp; Eastern&nbsp; collectors show more interest in weight standards and how the coins served as money while Western subjects seem better researched on types and dates with less attention to details of economics.&nbsp; I have not seen the question addressed of how many Gallic coins were made other than there are a lot of them still around.</p><p><br /></p><p>Five million a week seems out of line on the high side but 5 million a year seems reasonable or low but that is not based on careful study.&nbsp; I&#039;m also unclear on the question of die life on these coins.&nbsp; I was under the impression that they were made from pincer dies and I&#039;ve seen nothing to suggest that one half outlived the other as is well documented on an anvil and punch system.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; Again, as a Western collector of coins, I never saw the need to look for questions of how and how many as much as what, when and where.&nbsp; Do remember that these coins were made by more than one mint and probably with several teams within a mint location so one person might be involved in making up to a few thousand coins a day.&nbsp; The question then would come as to how many teams/people were working at this rate.&nbsp; Working at 334 days a year that would mean three teams could make a few million coins a year so 15 teams (the most we have documented from the Constantinian period at Antioch) would be good for 15 to 50 million a year.&nbsp; I&#039;d need to see evidence to accept more than that number but do realize that it is just a guess playing with numbers.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Observations:&nbsp; I have not noted any examples of two Gallic coins pointed out as being made from the same obverse die and a different reverse (or vice-versa).&nbsp; I have not seen very may coins offered that were pointed out as even being die duplicates of both sides.&nbsp; That means they used a lot of dies to make a lot of coins.&nbsp; I have not seen statistics applied to the period guessing how many dies were used.&nbsp; I do know a collector who believes in the theory that you can make a good guess at the number of dies by counting the number of dies seen in a large sample of coins.&nbsp; I&#039;ll have to ask him if he knows anything about Gallic.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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