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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 7889952, member: 19463&quot;]16.&nbsp; Brockages of Septimius Severus are not all that common.&nbsp; I have only one&nbsp; example from &#039;Emesa&#039;.&nbsp;&nbsp; A brockage results from a coin being unknowingly stuck in the top die and being used to strike the next coin.&nbsp; Students of coins consider them defective and, since they lack a reverse type, they do nothing to further our study of the series unless we consider them a sign that the pace of striking was fast enough that mistakes would happen.&nbsp; We do not know whether the ones that exist escaped detection or if mint policy considered them &#039;good enough for government work&#039;.&nbsp; Students of coins address types; economists track weight standards; who cares about technical numismatics?&nbsp; I do but I am in the minority.&nbsp; Coin 16 here is a later period &#039;Emesa&#039; denarius but we have no way of telling what reverse it missed out on having.&nbsp; Dies during this period were used with more than one reverse so even finding a die link to a normal coin would prove nothing.&nbsp; </p><p>[ATTACH=full]1361325[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>The &#039;Technical&#039; part of me made me ask the question I have not seen addressed before (experts are asked to fill me in on this if there have been studies of which I am ignorant).&nbsp; This brockage was caused by the intervention of another coin.&nbsp; What happened to that other coin?&nbsp; I say that the second impact against the second blank should have squashed that obverse to some degree.&nbsp; How much?&nbsp; I do not know but I suspect/propose that the &#039;mother of a brockage&#039; would look something like the coin below:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1361324[/ATTACH] </p><p>Here the reverse is well struck but the obverse is a bit flat looking.&nbsp; This could be just die wear.&nbsp; This could be just plain old wear for some reason affecting the coin more on that side.&nbsp; What my fanciful imagination sees here is an obverse somewhat normal on the upper left and distinctly more &#039;mushy&#039; in the higher regions across the flan.&nbsp; What I would <u>love</u> to see is a brockage denarius of this slightly scarce IIC series obverse die.&nbsp; The unevenness of the weakness on this coin would suggest that the coin I seek would be imperfectly centered (as is my brockage) because only part of the coin made contact with the blank that was to become the brockage.&nbsp; I would expect the brockage to be clear on the AVG IIC part of the legend but not on the opposite L SEP side.&nbsp; I imagine many brockages were realized by the man holding the die at the last second but there is no stopping the swing of the hammerman.&nbsp; I also suspect that a word was uttered not taught in first year Greek (this was an Eastern mint so I doubt the swearing was in Latin).&nbsp; My education did not include deletable expletives of late second century Syria (or Cappadocia, if you accept the latest guesses).&nbsp; Did yours?&nbsp; I would enjoy seeing any other Septimius Severus brockages or any other coins that bear on my theory that each brockage must have had a &#039;mother&#039; with equal but opposite characteristics. </p><p><br /></p><p>While I am not running out of Septimius coins, I am running short of real oddballs.&nbsp; Maybe I should show a few &#039;nice and normals&#039;?&nbsp;&nbsp; That might be out of character for me.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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