It's amazing what a couple of simple
tools can do, specifically digital
scales, calipers, and little pieces of paper with clock faces printed on them.
I'm rounding out my attributions to include
die alignment and maximum diameters for my coin
collection. I picked up a compact
scale five years ago and embarked on a mission to weigh and record the
weights of my coins, which I
had sometimes neglected. I have now procured a
caliper and read some practical advice in the discussion boards. I am going to go through my
collection again, recording diameters and adding
die axes.
I've learned about a lot of references and some best practices from
Forum, particularly in coin attributions. There is a succinct entry in
Numiswiki for
attributions, joining some Coin 101 entries, including
Die Alignment 101 and
Diameter 101.
I was a tad unsure about the value of
die axes, but as I am going through my
collection anyway, what harm would it do? And I flipped back and forth on whether to use degrees or clock hours, and I decided on the clock
face because of its very imprecision. I just don't want to be too fussy. Having practiced with
Die Alignment 101, I devised a suitable clock
face of my own and printed it out on 2"x2" (50mm) paper. See below.
Sample result: my
denarius of
Manlia Scantilla will be listed as: AR
Denarius (2.79 gm, 18 mm, 6h) of
Rome.
It is going to take time for me to go through all the coins, recording results in my database, and then posting updates to my
Forum member
gallery. I will just have to be persistent.