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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;medoraman, post: 1146307, member: 26302&quot;]Not sure if enough ancient collectors here collect these, but just wanted to share what I learned from talking to a medieval coin maker at my coin club last month. He makes thousands of medieval coins for his medieval club, starting with making the punches, then the dies, then finally the coins. He studies medieval methods pretty extensively.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, the subject of scyphates came up. I repeated the often told idea that they were struck that way. Ha said he had pretty definitive proof they weren&#039;t. He had a FDC scyphate from fresh dies, but with a softness in the center, not from the strike or die, but AFTER striking. He said he has tried to reproduce how books said scyphates were struck and could not strike them that way. However, after seeing this coin, he struck them using flat dies, and then punched them into the scyphate shape. He showed me many examples he created and they were absolutely perfect. </p><p><br /></p><p>This got me to thinking, and I went home and noticed Latin issues were different shaped than Byzantine. It appears they used a different shape punch! When I looked at some EF examples, especially gold and billon, almost all had the same softness in the center, the very LAST place there should be wear.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ok, maybe a kind of geeky revelation, and maybe old news to some, but this greatly helped me understanding these enigmatic issues. The minter said that the strength of a scyphate shaped coin would have been why it was done, being 3-4 times stronger than a flat coin, and more able to take day to day wear. He also had some even more intersting points about metal composition and &quot;break points&quot; in diluting down metal, but that is even geekier than this post. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Chris[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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