Double-Struck Ancient Coins

Not sure about ancients Bill. But for medieval and later I imagine most collectors avoid them as we're generally after a clear rendition of the design.

That's difficult enough to get with hand struck coins because there's a likelihood that the coin will shift slightly between hammer blows.

This means doubling is a much commoner phenomenon than with modern coins, where such things are curious and considered scarce errors.

This coin for example shows some fairly dramatic doubling in the legends. Fortunately the bust and main reverse are very crisp and so I was prepared to put up with its quirkiness! I quite like the way the last 'O' on the reverse has become a serpent!

I recently sold a small handful of error coins to someone, so people do collect them. But, as mentioned, they are very common. for example, off center striking is standard, so much so that a centered example is more valuable (especially valuable is full circle strikes that show the full border).

Sometimes corrected errors show up. One of the error coins I sold was this one:



The first strike was far off center so the coin was replaced in the die and struck again, carefully, giving a well centered second strike, unfortunately not with sufficient force to fill the high points of the die a second time.

pretty common with byzantine scyphate coins, but I think they sometimes double struck these on purpose because of the strange shaped die...so maybe not technically an error here.