What about engraver's legend guide lines that are sometimes seen? Or file marks on the die, possibly made to eliminate rust from a rusty die (my supposition here!)? Both are illustrated on the following coin.
Whether they are rust removal marks or just polish from filing, the diagonal lines shown here must go away after a few strikes. I don't have one nearly as bold as the one you show. I don't see legend guide lines on this one but offer the example I called Layout Circle (strongest under the BO) from my page: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/grade2.html Oddly my best file on die coin is also Laodicea Early while all my layout circles are Emesa.
Since I have never had any interest in ancients, I was not aware of any of this before. But I could not help but notice the similarity to coins that I used to collect. What I find most interesting is how long this technique for die manufacture must have been used. Here is a ducat that used to be in my collection, dated 1400-13. The rest is pretty much self explanatory.
Myself, I would never downgrade a coin for these. In fact, its absolute proof that its an early strike and this fact should be notated. I would grade your coin as gVF, reverse early die state as proven by die layout markings.
I have no ancients like that but I just wanted to say thats very cool & would easily add it to my collection.
I especially love Doug's example, as it easily shows how the dies were laid out for production. I will have to keep an eye out for one.
I'm not sure that that is what those lines are Chris. Can't swear to it, but I always thought those lines were from the initial filing down of the face of the die to get it flat. I do agree they are definitely signs of an early die state. I've seen too many others where the lines can be seen to be fading away as the die is used. Or are you talking about the other Doug's coin, the one with the circle ?
Well I was especially talking about Doug's with a circle I would love to have an example of. The first coin I was assuming they were file marks on the die to flatten the fields, something that would wear off fairly soon. The circular marks are just fantastic.
I have a few other coins with the circular marks to some degree but all are Emesa mint denarii suggesting that the technique may have been localized rather than something the Romans in general may have done. Of course nearly 1/4 of my collection consists of Emesa mint denarii so I may just not have seen enough other coins to have run across the die circles. We do have a lot of evidence of a central point on dies of many periods that must have made it easier to lay out the circle of dots that made up the boarder of so many coins. Perhaps what Emesa added was the idea that a line below the dots would make it easier to position the legends in a regular manner.
