Some Information About Roman Dies Please ?

Depending on the amount of output needed I'm sure there were more the one person at a workshop striking coins at a time. With each die being hand made they are not going to be exactly the same. This give us the various varieties listed in RIC. The coin coins were produced at the same workshop, but there is noticeable difference especially on the reverse, indicating to me at least the the dies were made by two different persons. I believe both are marked Lambda but the one on the second coin is struck from a worn die and squeezed together.

I tend to believe that imperial mints were really huge operations with in all probability literally thousands of workers of various skills engaged in many different tasks.
The primary purpose of minting coinage (with the image of the 'boss') was to pay the military and the various bureaucracies of government. It was considered vital that all the employees knew exactly who was buttering their bread !
That being said I believe the mints were huge operations. The Roman Legions alone accounted for around 250,000 soldiers and like every army required another army of people to support the 'troops'.

The mints would have had vast smelting operations where metal would be alloyed not only for the coins but also production of die sets etc.
The dies themselves probably had people responsible for the different aspects of their production. Workers of various skill no doubt handled different production tasks from rough engraving to the addition of lettering and final detail and polishing the finished product.
As the more talented artisans were doubtless employees and not slaves they may have even gotten such nice benefits as days off and even vacation time.
I am inclined to believe that the finer examples of the various officina were the product of more than just a select few people.
Some of the more miserable examples of imperial coinage were doubtless made with little care to quality control and possibly by a few workers. But the 'high end' stuff with fine details and well executed legends I firmly believe to be the work of groups of skilled people.

Thanks everyone for your replies !! ......Very very interesting !!...Loads of info!!

To sum up ....Approx 30,000 to 50,000 coins per set of dies.

I agree with you echizento that its a lambda in R-F.

Albert have you got any more information about the control mark ? As all the coins I've seen from this emission have the lambda so does this mean that maybe all the dies were cut by the same celator or....This is just an idea....maybe its the relation of the lambda to the castle gate ? I think I read something about this on Beast coins but it wasn't very clear.

Thanks FVRIVS I agree with you...Is there anywhere I can get information on how many coins were minted in a specific workshop in aspecific year ?

Good eyes Finn I would never have spotted that...so dies basically could be mixed and matched?

Any more info appreciated Thank you ...Saludos Paul

Albert's guess is certainly original, but unfortunately it is completely without precedent among the mints in this LRB period for making such an association with individual celators. As Palouche rightly pointed out, the lambda appears at three different officinae, so it cannot be a celator associated control mark.

Bruun treats it rather as a "series mark," which makes perfect sense. These marks referred to a period of time when certain types were being struck with a particular combination of details. That was how the mints dated the coins. Bruun lists this as the last series for this reverse type at Heraclea, toward the end of the period 318-320.

Why a lambda? That is actually rather easy to understand. Lambda is the Greek letter "L" and Heraclea only struck this particular series for the Licinii. None for members of the House of Constantine bear a lambda. Knowing that, what do you suppose the lambda = L stood for?