You raise some interesting questions.
Too often people focus only on the technical questions - which are important - like how many dies were used for an issue and how any coins were struck
per die. But there is not enough focus on those operational questions you raise.
People have studied how mints would have operated. I note in my book that
Estiot and
Zanchi's study of the operation of the Trier
mint 292/293 AD resulted in the following conclusions - two
officinae working, a total of at least 11 teams of strikers (so an
officinae was
not one single anvil), each striking team comprising 6 to 8 employees so 66-88 employees active in these striking teams (plus
mint employees working in the
mint but not directly in striking teams). Each team producing 6,000 coins
per workday so 66,000 coins
per workday from the 11 striking teams. (Sylvaine
Estiot and Pierre
Zanchi, De
Lyon a Treves: L'ouverture de l'atelier de Treves a l'epoque tetrarchique et ses premieres emissions, in
Revue Numismatique 171, 2014. And that is only one of several mints active in 292/293.
But one thing we don't know is how many workdays there were. I don't just mean how many
work days in a year versus holidays, but 'was the
mint meant to operate on a full time basis or not". As you noted, was it a full time job trying to operate all the time, or did it operate on a project basis - "we have an order for coins, let's operate at our 66,000/day capacity until we finish the job and then wait for the next job". Hard to be sure though we have no real indications of other professions for
mint staff and there are things written that suggest it was a full time job - for example the law that makes
mint staff "ignoble" - that is of commoner class - or the description of
Aurelian's struggle with the rebellion of the "monetari" of the
mint of
Rome in 271.
SC