Someone's Funny Coin Listing, Not Marcus Aurelius And Probably Photoshop?

Don't think it's photoshop, but very interesting restruck coin.

Adding a pic of the obv here so that we can continue to learn when the ebay listing comes down eventually. I'm interested to read what our Roman experts think.

Can't remember the last time I learned something THAT cool over morning coffee.

The argument there is that the coin remained on the obverse die when the reverse die was switched. If the coin didn't move at all, there wouldn't be any clear evidence of two strikes on that face. It would have to shift a little for there to be a second impression.

All of the three additional examples show the same thing, no evidence of two strikes on the obverse and two strikes from different dies on the reverse. Unless all four coins here are fake, I don't believe it's unreasonable to believe the striking process Kraay theorized existed at this point in time and these coins just failed to have been moved from the obverse die when the second reverse die struck it.

Tanman:

Maybe we are misunderstanding each other. I am not talking about the obverse. The emperor I am speaking of is the full image of the man standing, clasping hands with Concordia. That standing emperor had to be on the first strike clasping hands. Then on the second strike, from the other die, that second standing emperor had to be on the second die clasping hands. This should be blundered with evidence of the standing emperors. But there is no hint at all of the man standing clasping hands with Concordia. How can that ever be possible as that image had to have been engraved on these dies. We both agree there are two different images of Concordia. Overstruck coins show both strikes over each other. Where is the left part of these reverse dies?

Or maybe you are correct and the strike completely removes the old strike if the flan is new enough. And the second strike was only hit on the left and thus off struck or the weight on only one side in a more glancing blow. I guess that works.

Sorry, I definitely misunderstood your point.

It is unusual that only half of each strike is visible but I don't think that's impossible. Maybe the first strike was tilted and incomplete so the minters intentionally made a second tilted strike without realizing the die was inverted. It was done by hand after all. Why waste time restriking it and making it worse or melting it down to redo when it looks close enough?

I'm fairly certain this is legit because I have definitely seen something like this before, but I haven't been able to find exactly where. Searching around, I found some more similar examples (in a post from a prohibited forum that I cannot link to for whatever reason) where the reverse was restruck with a 180 degree rotation with only half of each strike is visible. But both of those examples seem to be struck with the same die...

An example of two rare occurrences at the same time?

A few coins with odd attributes like this have turned up over the years.

What could lead to a coin with these characteristics i.e. Two different reverse types on the same coin? One thought might be an overstrike. This doesn't really make sense in this scenario as these two reverses are contemporary and as such using an old coin to overstrike would be an odd thing to do. What if we think about the production processes? Is there some explanation that we can come up with there?

A range of experimental archeology has been performed over the years to understand how Roman coins were produced. From this we can conclude that the generally the obverse die was engraved and set in an anvil and the reverse die was set into a punch. Blanks were created and placed on the obverse die in the anvil and the punch was struck with a hammer to impact the images from the dies onto the blank. That is all fairly straight forward. It has been noted in these experiments that if you have a single pair of dies and you start trying to operate at speed that the reverse die starts to overheat and crack or mushroom. These experiments led to further experiments with different strike rates etc. which let to an experiment where two reverse dies were mounted on a yoke and these dies were alternated between strikes. This let to the die being able to cool between strikes sufficiently that the cracking and mushrooming lessened significantly.

So what? This is all well and good and theoretical but is there any evidence for it from the coins that we see? The simple answer is... Yes, but these are coins where there has been an error in the manufacturing process that provides that evidence. If everything is going smoothly it would be difficult / impossible to find this evidence. Having two coins with different reverse dies linked to a single obverse die is common enough. This does not prove that they were being used on alternate strikes of the process. But what if we were to find coins where they didn't remove the coin from the first strike to insert a new blank before a second strike is made? What would this look like? We would expect a coin with a strong obverse strike or even evidence of a slight double strike on this obverse if the coin had shifted slightly on the obverse die and then evidence of two dies on the reverse.... Do we see these...? Yes. The coin above is one such coin. I have owned two examples. All the examples I have seen are evident because they come from not dies where there is enough design difference between the two dies to make them evident.

My first example is relatively subtle....

A silvered Ant. of Aurelian

Obv:- IMP C AVRELIANVS AVG, Radiated, cuirassed bust right
Rev:- SOLI INS AVG, Sol standing left raising right hand, holding globe in left hand standing on captive in front, another captive behind
Minted at Ticinum, PXXT in exe



So what are we seeing here? We have a good strong strike on the obverse and a reverse that needs explanation. Is this an engraving error? No..... It can be explained by two different reverse dies of very similar types having undergone the error described above. We know that there were two similar types being produced from the officina at this mint at this time. Both types were "Sol standing left raising right hand, holding globe in left hand standing on captive in front, another captive behind" with a Star in the left field and PXXT in exe. but two different reverse legends were being used, one being SOLI INVICTO and the other being ORIENS AVG. When we look at the reverse here we can see two different representations of Sol and the Captives can be see from the two dies. This is subtle but clear.

The second example that I have is much clearer as to what is going on though at first inspection the coin looks a bit of a mess.



Obv:- IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG COS I - I, Laureate head right
Rev:- FELICIT..- VICTOR, grain ear between crossed cornucopiae
Minted in Emesa. A.D. 194-195

Looking more closely at the obverse we can see a clear lateral double strike. See PERT at 2 o'clock.



What is going on with the reverse. What we have here is two completely different reverse types....

FELICITAS TEMPOR, grain ear between crossed cornucopiae and VICTOR SEVER AVG, Victory walking left, holding wreath in right hand, palm in left.

I suspect that the crossed cornucopiae is the second strike obliterating sections of the first strike. The majority of this design is still present.



The reverse design should look as follows though is probably slightly earlier than the following coin which has a shorter legend:-



The first strike has largely been obliterated though we we see enough elements to pick out the legend and type. We can see VICTOR S, which was only used on coins with VICTOR SEVER AVG, Victory types. At 6 o'clock we can see a ground line with two feet walking left, with the outline remains of a robe, which extends up to the waist. We can see a wreath at 9o'clock with part of the robed arm that would have been holding it.



The reverse design should look as follows:-



I hope that this thread is useful in explaining what I believe has happened to this coin.

Regards,
Martin

You have quietened us.
Thanks for your work.

There is a lot to think about...........
Generally speaking, the idea crossed my mind that the OP's coin was an error or maybe perhaps less likely, - a deliberate mint sport or fantasy, made by mint employees.

Has been known with modern coins.