Roman Coinage Video

echizento: Thankyou for the link.
Everybody interested in things ancient should look at the video.

Couple of comments:

Cleaning of ancient coins: Most ancient coins need some sort of cleaning after their discovery. What I find interesting and somewhat justified about is HOW the coins were cleaned in the video. Although I have never advocated cleaning ancient coins in the way shown, the methods used here is exactly what I have been doing!

The reason I have not advocated cleaning in such a way in the CCF is because it is very easy to do more harm than good, with inexperience.
I have ruined a few coins myself in this way, as I was teaching myself. You just have to know when to stop! Fortunately, I only get to clean low valued coins, because almost every ancient high valued ancient coin in Australia on the market has been professionally cleaned.

Cold striking as shown would not have happened. The blanks for silver and copper alloyed coins would need to be heated to soften them , and to extend die life.

It is good to see an ancient history, which is the history of the ancient coins themselves, rather than just an ancient history, which is supported by the occasional coin illustration.

Nevertheless, there have been numerous modern experiments that show cold striking works remarkably well. The subject was put on a scientific footing (rather than speculation) with David Sellwood's 1963 Numismatic Chronicle article "Some experiments in Greek minting technique." Sellwood knew that microscopic inspection of the interior metallic structure of numerous Athenian coins suggested some were hot struck but most were not. He struck many "coins" with dies he engraved and found hot striking took fewer blows of the hammer, but the heat of the hot flans transferred to the dies and was not good for them. He also struck many "coins" with cold flans and it took more blows, but worked fine.
This article did not end the debate--rather it began it.
Here is a link to a recent experiment:
http://journals.cambridge.org/actio...&aid=1211948
Here is the same author again:
http://journal.exarc.net/files/exar..._minting.pdf
More experiments are in progress:
http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v13n23a16.html
I'm going to stop now, but I'm pretty sure there are articles asserting cold striking works fine, at least for some issues.
I have always wondered how much wood it would take to melt all that metal for flans and keep it hot until it was ready to be struck, all in downtown Rome, if flans were made and heated at the mint.
Here is a youtube video on modern academic experiments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT3p9cM4QWQ
most of the die stuff begins about 11 more minutes in. They did more than 17,000 cold struck coins.
-- Warren

Brilliant, thank you echizento

I did enjoy it. Thanks for the link.

It was the first time I've heard some Latin words that I've read many times but have never been sure how they are pronounced.

I was hanging on every word to hear if there were some that I would like to know the correct pronunciation of. There were a few but not nearly as many as I had hoped.

Where I live there is no one I know who's interested in talking about ancient coins, so it's reading only.

yeah, I watched that the other day...nice vid.

also learned some pronunciations.....and freaked out on the dremel...but I guess they know what they're doing.