Curtis JJ: That may be... there could be a hundred different punches. It is undeniable, though, that something broke from the top of the punch on your coin
I was trying to be diplomatic. Overall, it’s not an important topic, but if I sound annoyed, it’s because you’re claiming with absolute certainty to be right and that I and others are wrong. And – more importantly – you’re not taking anyone else’s opinion (or the mountain of evidence) at all seriously. Not nearly as seriously as I’ve taken your hypothesis.
It does sometimes happen that all the published sources overlook or get something wrong. So, I took your theory seriously in
good faith. But you’re not doing the same – at all. Using emphatic words like “definitely” and “undeniable” doesn’t substitute for evidence. It’s slightly insulting. (And, factually speaking, “undeniable” is wrong.)
Even if we try to be as favorable to your theory as possible, and ignore all the other specimens and context, photos of the two coins you’ve mentioned (i.e., yours & mine) do not convincingly show what you say they show.
My coin’s photo(s): I guess you’re referring to the encrustations in the upper
part of the
incuse? At best, you might tentatively hypothesize that those aren’t actually encrustations but instead evidence of a broken stamp. But even if you entertain that theory, it doesn't make sense to call it undeniable without having handled the coin (or considering anything else about the context, including all the other specimens struck from the same stamp).
That exact specimen has been photographed and/or published many times over the past 60 years (illustrated in
SNG Levante,
SNG von Aulock, and
Robert Hiérapolis Castabala, reproduced in
RPC and elsewhere). It was one of the specimens cited by
Howgego (p. 242,
type 686). (He used a different coin for the “plate coin,” the
BMC specimen &
RPC’s “plate coin. Beyond all those authors/references who were
writing about this exact coin, many others have said the same thing about other examples of the same
type, some from the same stamp/countermark "die".)
https://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coins/4/4976https://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/countermark/807Your photos (being as generous as possible): I can’t tell if you’re correct and it’s a
crack in the
countermark as you say, or a cleaning scratch or excavation ding, a
flan defect, or any number of other possibilities. Some of those are more plausible than others, but none definite/undeniable (as long as we’re
still ignoring all the context, including other photos of coins struck from that stamp).
If you’ve noticed something new that everyone else missed, I genuinely would like to know. But so far, it just sounds like you “want to believe” so much that you are unwilling to consider what anyone else has said or the evidence that would confirm or disconfirm your belief.