I recently acquired a very interesting denarius of Julius Caesar which exhibits a curious phenomenon that was written about by Bernhard Woytek in "Die Verwendung von Mehrfachstempeln in der antiken Münzpr.gung und die "Elefantendenare" Iulius Caesars (RRC 443/I)" which is in German, unfortunately. A digital version of it can be found here: https://www.e-periodica.ch/cntmng?pid=snr-003:2006:85::263 Notice on the obverse that the coin exhibits an additional dotted border to the right of the main design. The coin is absolutely not double struck. The obverse flan face is flat and it is perfectly obvious that the extra border was struck at the same time as the rest of the coin. What this shows us is that multiple obverse images were sunk into the obverse die on some dies. Prior theories (Crawford?) suggested that this was done to strike more than one coin at a time to improve production. That would mean the reverse, striking die would also have more than one image or 2 dies would have to be bound together, which is unlikely. Woytek appears to argue (I can only Google translate) that the design of the crude elephant of this issue is smaller in diameter than the larger and more artistic elephants so that led the mints to make use of the extra area on the die face by sinking more than one copy of the design in the die. When a flan is struck somewhat off center, it will pick up the adjacent design. My coin: Woytek's example from Milan. Same obverse dies: TIF's Caesar Elephant. Same reverse dies as mine. Could the dies used for her obverse also have more than one design sunk into them? A curious question.
It took me a moment to realize what you were talking about, but wow, that IS interesting! I wonder if any of those "multiple" dies survived. Would they have been bronze? If iron, they're probably all rusted away by now.
I really like the coins and the thoughts. I have often wondered WHY multiple striking dies were never used, especially when mass quantities of output were needed. I GET that slave labor is lower cost, but the TIME factor of PRODUCTION is also a need... Nice @Carthago ! Mine is busy with droppings vs. a dual die for production: RR Julius Caesar AR Denarius 49 BCE Traveling Mint Elephant-Pontificates Sear 1399 Craw 443-1
I don't think I've ever seen evidence of this before on a Roman coin... very intriguing! Here's a pretty dramatic instance on a 1662 Livonia solidus (Charles XI of Sweden), though in this case the flans are probably cut after striking(?):
Excavating this thread because I missed it during the post Irma/Maria dark days. Wow, what fascinating coins, @Carthago! Wouldn't it be something to find a die that confirms the multiple images! It's hard to imagine how such a die would be an improvement over the one-image-per variety. Seems like it would be hard to use (more difficult to center the flan).
The problem I have with this is that the dot borders of the two circles seem too close together for two separate flans to be used at the same time. Maybe an oversized flan was used and subsequently cut in two after striking? That would add a counterproductive step. Could we be misinterpreting the evidence? Maybe @Carthago coin is evidence of "hubbing" of dies, and his die was inadvertently double-struck?
I am afraid I can't read German. I have a paperback reprint of George Hill's 1922 paper "Ancient Methods of Coining" where he discusses this. Hill says (pages 37-38): “… one die was carelessly dubbed into the anvil, so close to the other that it was impossible to strike a coin on the latter without getting and impression of part of the former. This is additional proof that hubbing was practiced, since we can hardly suppose that such a mistake would have been made in the course of the much slower operation of direct cutting. You can read the full paper at http://www.jstor.org/stable/42663813 for free if you sign up for a free account then "add" this book to your "shelf". (Shelves are JSTOR's way of supplying the article for free but making it frustrating enough that you will consider joining.) If you get the article, look at the plate at the end, especially coins 18, 20 and 23. I am not sure I buy Hill's argument. An anvil would have been a rare and expensive item. An engraver might who didn't have a blank anvil might have started cutting a die very close to a previous die cut into the same anvil.
I think it is relevant to the discussion to post this Caesar denarius adjusted al marco. There were a number of denarii that had to be minted with an ingot of a specific weight so happened that at the end of the process there weren’t enough silver to mint them all. When they realized it, a common practice was to remove silver with a gauge from overweight denarii. This is coin is a sample of how appear a coin adjusted al marco. This is a specimens from my collection adjusted Marco and with a graffiti on the obverse, on the reverse some punch mark. Here a link to a publication of Clive Stannard were this process is described. http://www.stannard.info/website/Publications.html
It's a shame the scoop had to mar the elements on the coin, but some of the adjusted coins I've seen are quite interesting.
