If you pay attention to enough less than perfect coins, it becomes obvious that there are more die clashes from certain rulers or periods than others. Probably the leader in this category is
Claudius II but
Victorinus has
his share. I assume (a dangerous thing to do) that clashes would be a sign of
mint workers pressured to turn out more coins than reasonable with given resources. There are die clashes on
rare coins but we see more on those issued by the millions. Is there another explanation for some having more clashes? Possibly, clashes happened equally frequently in other periods but the
mint officials retired
clashed dies while
Claudius II did not see the need to exert any
quality control. Might clashes be more likely to happen with some change in the striking routine (e.g. alternating
reverse dies on one
obverse) or
type of die (e.g. hinged)?
We are told that clashes are the result of dies struck together with no
flan between them. I wonder if the use of
hinged dies and thin flans might transfer enough stress on overused dies to show die damage
ghosting without an actual clash. If there is a difference,
clashed dies are more likely to be seen on older, worn dies since the clash can occur after the die has been in use for a while. We have coins that show the same die before and after the clash. I went out on a limb and wrote a page saying that I did not believe in coins
overstruck on an
incuse (
brockage) but
had to eat those words when I saw one. We should never fall into the trap of saying 'always' and 'never' but it is certainly true that overstriking probably accounts for less than one in a million of the coins showing this
ghosting. I would love to see someone do a study of the clash situation on a large
hoard of
Claudius II coins just to see if a pattern turns up but finding two coins from the same dies is hard enough without asking for a series of die states that would allow ruling out progressive rather than one time damage.
Does anyone know of a coin which shows
reverse clash damage from two separate clash incidents? I have a coin with double clash incuses but that is from the coin being double struck rather than the die having double clashes.
Those new to the subject of
clashed dies are invited to visit my page where coins mentioned above (and others) are shown.
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/brock.html
