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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Carthago, post: 2873724, member: 76111&quot;]I recently acquired a very interesting denarius of Julius Caesar which exhibits a curious phenomenon that was written about by Bernhard Woytek in &quot;Die Verwendung von Mehrfachstempeln in der antiken Münzpr.gung und die &quot;Elefantendenare&quot; Iulius Caesars (RRC 443/I)&quot; which is in German, unfortunately.&nbsp; A digital version of it can be found here: <a href="https://www.e-periodica.ch/cntmng?pid=snr-003:2006:85::263" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.e-periodica.ch/cntmng?pid=snr-003:2006:85::263" rel="nofollow">https://www.e-periodica.ch/cntmng?pid=snr-003:2006:85::263</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Notice on the obverse that the coin exhibits an additional dotted border to the right of the main design.&nbsp; The coin is absolutely not double struck.&nbsp; 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. </p><p><br /></p><p>What this shows us is that multiple obverse images were sunk into the obverse die on some dies.&nbsp; Prior theories (Crawford?) suggested that this was done to strike more than one coin at a time to improve production.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p><p><br /></p><p>My coin:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]687446[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Woytek&#039;s example from Milan.&nbsp; Same obverse dies:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]687447[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>TIF&#039;s Caesar Elephant.&nbsp; Same reverse dies as mine.&nbsp; Could the dies used for her obverse also have more than one design sunk into them?&nbsp; A curious question.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]687448[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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