Why were some coins cast and not struck?

A punch is a die technically, so the first coin was struck. Just not as much care was taken in flan preparation.

Edit: Btw, there is a lot of confusion about the first coins. People say they were struck in naturally occurring electrum. While its true there are naturally occurring electrum nuggets in Lydia, they had variable percentages of gold and silver. The first thing the mint did, from the very beginning, was to separate the silver and gold into separate metals and then recombine them in the lowest acceptable percentage of gold content. From the very beginning, governments have misled and cheated the people it would seem.

 

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In China, and cultures heavily influenced by its currency system (Japan, Vietnam, etc), most currency types are of extreme low values. They even had laws to prevent people from hoarding coins, because it's so easy to do that and it would affect circulation. Wealth in those cultures (before re-instroduction of high value coinage in the past 700 years or so) were represented by other means, not coins.

When all coins were copper and of penny value, even if the production method was just slightly less costly, or required few less labor, it would had been chosen since there's virtually no worry of counterfeits.

The other thing is, labor cost in coin production, even those copper-iron alloy ones, is nothing compared to value of the metal. Again, even copper worth far more than labor in those days.

On the other topic, casting flans is different from casting coins....
More importantly though, some of you seemed to have misunderstood casting to be a 1 step process, it is not. You don't just make molds from masters (seeds), there are production masters, because mold-making deteriorates masters. So again, completely wrong guys, the "seed" in casting gets worn too, and depend on the process, might wear faster than punching does to a die.

There are different types of casting, even in ancient worlds. Sand mold, clay mold, wax mold, then you have loss wax which is a completely different animal.
Ever seen inca gold figures? You can't make that stuff beating metal, and they didn't have the technology to produce harder alloy than gold so they could beat metal (or die punch) anyway.

 

To my knowledge,Western ancient cast coinage did not use seed coins. The designs were engraved directly into the molds.

 

Essentially, striking was used as a mean of certification, of the metal content.
It's just in western coinage it was such commonplace to use precious metal that all coins were "certified", down to bronze (eventhough there was no real need to do that to copper).
The reason behind is precisely that there is not a lot of differences in cost of the 2 production methods. Where the industry was calibrated to striking (in Rome), they used dies instead of opening up a complete branch of manufacturing for just the low value coins.

Vise versa, where maybe something happened that the mint facility was destroyed or personnel dispersed, they would need to rebuild a manufacturing process. If the type of coins they planned to produce were all low valued and required no striking process to "certify" them, then they might choose to cast, because it's a little easier, required fewer skilled labor.

 

This all makes sense on paper, but does it really fit the physical evidence mentioned by medoraman and myself?

 

I find it hard to believe we have had so few photos in this thread so I'll show a few cast coins. My favorite is the Aes Grave sextans turtle. I would love to have a liberal as (full pound size) but decent ones seem to be $4000 up. They are on the list of coins that can't be imported into the US so it is unlikely that the ones here will go down.


Chach, 'snow leopard' IDed as such since that was the big cat of note in the area at the time but the detail really does not prove anything.


Sungas, Ganges Valley AE15

 

Selinos, AE Cast Tetras (3 Onkia)


Akragas, AE Cast Onkia (1 Onkia)


Selinos, AE Cast Onkia (1 Onkia)


Akragas, AE Cast Trias (4 Onkia)


Celtic, Gaul, AE18 Cast Potin


=> is that cast enuf for ya?!!

 

Want MORE, Want MORE

What's the "bowl-shaped" one?

 

here's a cast RR semuncia...

 

This looks struck to me.

 

is it? i thought these were cast...but am not at all sure.

 

Ditto.

 

Doug, just for you. Thanks for the opening.
I look for new cast pieces at any auction I see now. I have one on its way & will share it soon, I hope.
my favorite set

super fly

small as

dolphin and thunderbolt triens

 

Seriously, what is a cast flan without a big casting spur:



From Syracuse ca. 400BC - the flan was cast of course then the coin was struck - but the casting spur was never broken off! Lazy Syracusians.

 

Very nice group, rrdenarius, thanks for sharing.

An interesting collection could be made of 'casting errors'. This one will be hard to top:
http://culturalinstitute.britishmus...-pig-s-trotter-appendage/GwGhDHYSrn_y3Q?hl=en

 

WOW!!! That is a coin with a leg and a hoof!!??!!

 

Going back to some of the questions by Herberto that somehow got unanswered. The original coin that started this post is indeed cast as opposed to being struck. The evidence is clearly in the article I posted earlier with images of the casting molds used. The monogram is that of Romanus II (Ρωμανός as seen on the coin). There is some debate as to whether there is a variety that has a blank obverse or it is just heavily worn down version of the one with steps on it.

The coins from Cherson are known to be cast and the question of whether there are other Byzantine cast coins, I believe there were others but I can't seem to remember what they were or references to them.

 

Casting spurs with this series is testament to the lazy Syracusians:



Another with Arethusa that I had to have because of the fantastic design and condition of the coin, and the fact that Arethusa's "bun" is on the spur.

 

M


An interesting collection could be made of 'casting errors'. This one will be hard to top:
http://culturalinstitute.britishmus...-pig-s-trotter-appendage/GwGhDHYSrn_y3Q?hl=en
[/QUOTE]
Are all these "Agrippa Augustus" coins cast?

 

That is a bottle opener. After a great day of collecting, Agrippa says "pop open a cold one!"