Highly off-centred/ double struck Alexander coin.

[JayAg47]

Got this 'unidentified' coin from eBay mainly for it's weird strike, most double struck coins I've seen had the images on top of each other, also mostly on the same side, however on this coin it looks like as if the hammer had two or more sets of die to strike two or more blanks at a time, and when this oblong flan was was stuck, it got in the middle and the images on both sides overlapped. As you can see on the obverse the border dots and the head reappearing, and on the reverse the head of the eagle appearing on the left.

What do you guys think about this wild idea?

[shanxi]

This coin fits:

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10304211g

https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb418366043

 

About the double strike. I see  two strikes of the obverse well separated, as in your drawing, but only a small shift for the eagle on the reverse. But maybe there were more than two strikes.

Edited September 6, 2022 by shanxi

[Curtis JJ]

That is really interesting. If I understand right: You're suggesting the dies themselves had multiple designs engraved on them (probably not for striking two coins at once but using either of the two)? I know some very early archaic fractions worked that way and I'm sure it was used on later types too. And I could imagine that being a technical solution to some problem (e.g. keeping the dies from overheating during rapid repeated striking). And, when you say double- struck, at least on the obv., both impressions were struck at once (from both conjoined obverses)?

But I can't quite figure out how that works here. Possibly just limited imagination. The obv images are far enough apart to imagine separate dies (or die sections).  

But on the reverse, it looks like two sequential strikes since one is covering up part of the latter. 

It is very unusual to see a stroke as far off center as the "under" strikes. Occasionally I've seen an undertype flan folded or prepared in such a way that the previous coin's design gets "pushed" to the edge but I don't think that's happening here. 

Not that long ago I saw a Zoom presentation at the ANS with a pair of researchers studying cases where mistakes/flaws/errors revealed something about the production process. If this turns out to be something truly unusual I'll send you their info so you can share it. Curious to hear what others think. 

It's amazing how much we still don't know (and how much production varied over the centuries).

 

Edited September 8, 2022 by Curtis JJ

[Curtis JJ]

P.s. Here's a dramatic and uncommon "flip-over double-strike" from Olympia, Elis. You can see Zeus's elbow/arm & part of the reverse legend on Apollo's head and part of of Apollo's neck/head truncation on the reverse::

 

Should look more like this (NOT MINE):

[Ed Snible]

The anvil might have contained multiple obverse dies.

See George Hill, "Ancient Methods of Coining" (1922), the last pages.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42663813

(Signing up for the free JStor account gives you access to 99 articles a month.)

It's a good article.  It was reprinted in the 1980s as a booklet.

[JayAg47]

10 hours ago, Curtis JJ said:

I know some very early archaic fractions worked that way and I'm sure it was used on later types too. And I could imagine that being a technical solution to some problem (e.g. keeping the dies from overheating during rapid repeated striking). And, when you say double- struck, at least on the obv., both impressions were struck at once (from both conjoined obverses)?

5 hours ago, Ed Snible said:

The anvil might have contained multiple obverse dies.

 

I just noticed a third set of border dots appearing on the left side! looks like the anvil had multiple dies, at least on the obverse.

Thanks to the striker's lousy job of centring the blank, now we can study at least a part of how the minting process worked!

 

Edited September 9, 2022 by JayAg47