THE ORIGINAL ERROR COINS

As long as humans have been making coins there have been errors along with them. Those die cracks, brockages, off-strikes and double strikes were made thousands of years ago with bronze dies and hammers. In this article I will go into some of the errors that were produced at mints now long gone, by people long forgotten.

Striking Errors

Brockages:

Brockage are one of my favorite ancient errors. They were caused by an already struck coin striking a blank flan rather than the die. This led the design to transfer as an incuse image onto one side of the flan, while the other side maintained the intended image. These errors are very dramatic and noticeable compared to other coins and are fascinating to look at. When you've never seen an ancient brockage, it's a little eerie seeing how a modern problem was also a problem thousands of years ago.

 

This coin of Antoninus Pius exhibits a brockage. Notice a reversed image of the obverse is incused on the reverse.

 

This denarius of the Roman Republic shows a clear brockage.

Off-Center/Misaligned Die Strikes:

While finding an off-center coin today is a treat, you'll start to notice it's not the same for ancient coins. A majority of ancient coins have some form of off-center or misaligned die strike as they were never struck the same. Usually these errors detract from the value of the coin as most people would prefer the perfectly centered versus the off-centered one.

 

This Macedonian silver coin was struck with its obverse misaligned.

 

This Tetradrachm of Ephesos exhibits a misaligned die strike.

 

This Denarius of Octavian presents a nice off-center strike.

For more information about CONECA, see:
https://conecaonline.org/

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