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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Tom Maringer, post: 188422, member: 7033&quot;]Hi Jerry:</p><p><br /></p><p>Collaring is a relatively recent coining technique. Before collaring all coins were broadstruck. The problem with them is that since there is no clearly defined edge, they are prone to being clipped. Also, bankers hate them because they don&#039;t stack nicely. So in response to the need for both security (anti-clipping) and ease of counting, collaring was developed. There is a quite involved section in Denis Cooper&#039;s THE ART AND CRAFT OF COINMAKING (which is an EXCELLENT tome by the way) about all the various means and strategems of making and deploying collars.</p><p><br /></p><p>The earliest known attempt to strike a coin in a collar occurred in Paris about 1555, but the difficulties of extraction and feeding caused it to be very slow and unsatisfactory. Almost all coins before about 1750 or so are broadstruck. Collaring is an added complexity... broadstriking is much simpler. For collaring the dies much be &quot;necked&quot; down to just fit into the collar (or the collar made to just fit over the dies). The necking of the die causes the edges to be very subject to damage... especially by clashes. The blank must be very carefully cut to just drop within the collar. When the coin is struck it is forcefully wedged into the collar and must therefore be forcefully ejected. </p><p><br /></p><p>By contrast, dies for broadstriking are engraved directly on a &quot;broad&quot; die face without necking. Therefore they are much stronger as they have a lot of metal supporting the die face around the edge. Also... that broad face will absorb the force of an inadvertant clash without damaging the engraved portion of the die. Finally... they can be used with almost any blank since there is no particular exact size that it must be. </p><p><br /></p><p>The drawback to broadstriking is that the blanks must be centered by eye, so offcentered strikes become the norm and well-centered strikes demand a premium. </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve attached some photos. One shows my very first set of dies, etched on hexagonal steel die-blanks. Another shows a broadstruck faux French colonial I made, where the edge of the coin is defined by a series of shallow &#039;dentilations&#039;. The copper blank was considerably smaller than the rim and you can see the bulbous effect at the edges as the metal flowed outward. The third photo is of a silver broadstruck coin without any attempt to define the edge. The silver simply flowed outward in an uneven fashion, even cracking somewhat at the very edge. So the idea is to make an old looking fantasy coin by doing it the way it was done in the old days. Those old coins have a certail look and feel because of the techniques used to make them. If you use those techniques, you can naturally attain that feel and appearance. </p><p><br /></p><p>Have fun![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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