Trajan Provincial Coin with Camel on Reverse

After looking again at the two photos, and communicating with the seller (Ken Dorney), I concluded that in fact my Trajan camel drachm is a double die match with the Roma Numismatic coin sold in 2013 and illustrated in the Woytek & Butcher article. On closer examination, the difference I thought I saw between the two obverse laurel wreaths isn't really a difference at all.

As I mentioned above, I've never before found a die match even on one side for any of my coins. let alone a double die match, let alone to a coin illustrated in an article published in The Numismatic Chronicle. It's rather exciting to have done so here, to be honest.

Which leads me to ask all of you, how often have you found double die matches? Is it something you've commonly encountered? If you'd like to, please post about any examples you've found, even though of course my question isn't directly related to the subject of this thread. But it is my thread, so I suppose I'm allowed to go off-topic!

 

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I have quite a few die matches...I'm not sure how many. I have one set of 5 double die matches and one set of four.

 

This is why I enjoy posting coins here, even if I have posted them repeatedly. Collectors will "discover" something when they glance at my coin. I like it when they see one of my coins, pass it by, then kinda go "Hey, that reminds me of something."

I have several coins like this (@red_spork has gratefully done this to me a few times with my Republics.)

My Pertinax was called out:


Roman Empire -
Pertinax (193 A.D.)
AE sestertius. Rome mint, 19,60 grs. 28 mm
Obv: LAETITIA TEMPORVM COS II.
IMP (CAES P HELV - PERTINAX AVG) Head, laureate, to right..
Rev: LAETITIA TE -MPORVM COS II / S - C Laetitia standing l. holding wreath and sceptre.
Ref: RIC 17. C. 21.

@Julius Germanicus called it out and said:
Nice !
Yours is one of the 26 specimen of RIC 17 that I found.
Those were, according to Woodward, struck with four obverse dies and six reverse dies.
Your Sestertius´ obverse die is Woodward AV 2 (illustrated in Woodward, plate XII, Nr.3, and BMC 27, plate 2, Nr.2), and it should be a double die match with the coin illustrated in Banti, Nr.11.

I was / am very grateful for the research and info!

LOL, @DonnaML , someday, I will be looking forward to a post of mine to be responded by you as: "Brian, that was dumb. This is what you REALLY have..."

 

In most cases we find die matches frequently with more scarce coins that used fewer dies in the making of the type while we find few when the coins are very common and were made from a thousand dies. Those of us who specialize in coins from a less common group tend to have quite a few die matches but we don't always keep double die matches (term: die duplicate) because they don't convey much information beyond the progress of die wear or failures like cracks. I find more interest in coins hat are die linked, meaning one die that matches and the other that does not. The example I post too often is this set of six coins that share the obverse die but have different reverses.


Some issues, for example the tetradrachms of Syracuse were struck using one die at a time replacing either side as they failed so we get a series that leapfrogs along with each die used with only one or two mates. Some series replaced both dies together. Some randomly assorted dies among several teams working simultaneously. We learn different things by studying these patterns.

 

Congrats on the die-match, Donna.

I have one die match, thanks to CT member TIF and her famous digital overlays. It matches the British Museum specimen, which makes me feel like a much more serious collector than I really am.

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/marcus-aurelius-sestertius-die-match-or-am-i-fooling-myself.342924/



Here's the whole thing:





British Museum Obv. My Rather More Worn Obv.


Marcus Aurelius Æ Sestertius
(156-157 A.D.)
Rome Mint
[AVRE]LIVS CAES ANT[ON AVG PII F], bare head right, slight drapery on shoulder / TR POT XI C[OS II] S C, Fortuna standing left holding rudder and raising hem of skirt.
RIC 1338a.
(24.45 grams / 29 mm)

Die Match Note:
The obverse die on this example matches British Museum R.13854
(see Coin Talk post July 19, 2019: "Marcus Aurelius Sestertius - Die Match (or am I fooling myself?)" CT Member TIF made digital overlay of both coins.


I hope TIF is doing okay during these troubled times - I haven't seen her around CT for a while.

 

Fascinating, @dougsmit. In RPC III online, the entry for the Trajan camel drachm (https://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coins/3/4076) gives the following information about die matches among the 95 specimens cited:

"Specimens 95

Die-links 1, 11, 49: same obv. die. 2, 28, 41, 74–5: same obv. die. 3, 36, 61: same obv. die. 4–5: same obv. die. 6, 8, 81: same obv. die. 9, 58: same obv. die. 12, 14, 80, 89: same obv. die. 15, 18, 68, 92: same obv. die. 23, 66, 76: same obv. die. 29, 62: same obv. die. 51–2: same obv. die. 70, 84: same obv. die as 4081/1, 4. 71, 79, 86: same obv. die. 73, 90: same obv. die.

Note [85 coins, 57 obv. dies, 1 shared with 4081]"

No reverse die matches or double-die matches are mentioned; I don't know if that's because there weren't any or because the RPC III people didn't bother trying to match the reverses, for whatever reason. Leaving that aside, the fact that there are so many obverse die matches in a group of fewer than 100 specimens, and that the total number of different obverse dies is so much lower than the number of different specimens examined, certainly suggests that the number of different obverse dies used to strike this coin type wasn't very large. Which would fit the Woytek & Butcher article's suggestion that this coin was designed in Rome, and that the dies may have been manufactured in Rome and shipped to Arabia for the coins to be struck.

 

Thanks, and I get the feeling -- as in "Wow, my coin matches one published in The Numismatic Chronicle!!"