Numismatic SHINY!

[dr_nebula]

As many of my readers and friends know, the doctor has a diverse array of hobbies. Not only do I deeply delve into astronomy and astro-imaging, but I'm a macro-photographer and a collector of ancient coins, fossils (trilobites), stamps and historical (propaganda) covers/postcards of Das Dritte Reich.I've just gotten back into astro-imaging, so 'new

Comments

[firesign10]

Beautiful coinage!

*skritches SK*

[a_kosmos]

Great coins! I especially like the first one.

*scritches the shadow kitty and blows a kiss to the good doctor*

[dr_nebula]

*swoon*

:-)

[entropic_om]

Very neat! Question, given the half-circle pattern on the first one. Were Roman coins "stamped" like we think of coins being stamped today?

[dr_nebula]

Not like today - they used a 'circular' planchet of metal (silver/bronze - etc), heated up until red hot then placed it between an upper and lower die. Then some large slave would hit it HARD with a sledgehammer.

The planchets were roughly stamped into circles of the same weight, but the coins were all hand made.

[wendles]

I was going to ask the same question, and now I have another one. Does the position of the edge pattern on the first coin indicate that it was made off-centre, or that it used to have a wider border and has worn down - or was the pattern always off-centre? To my untrained eye it looks as though the blank was in the wrong place when it was thumped; but that only makes sense if the dies didn't have a tiny lip around the edge to prevent the blank from slipping, which seems like an obvious feature to build in.

[miintikwa]

Shiny! I especially like the Apollo coin.

*scritches!*

[norda]

Oh, how beautiful.

I know I've been absent from the Lab for a while, so extra scritches for the Shadow Kitty and extra smooches for the Doctor.

[dr_nebula]

YES!

:-)