Coinery

Just taking both your points, would a collector in the late 1700s be interested in imitation pieces, as Besley suggests? Unless they were intended to fool back then? Seems a very advanced forgery for the time?

Well that’s reassuring at least. When did they get called out? Were they present in any old collections?

Mine’s an enquiry into whether these HCs are being bought and sold as genuine, I don’t have any fixed ideas about them, as yet? But they do seem wrong, even with limited insight. What’s your position on them?

I’m guessing then that they are all currently being bought and sold as genuine?

How many are known?

The scores are all wrong though aren’t they, they’re incuse on the flan, and not even present at all on this one?

As a first observation, can I ask the obvious? What are the score marks across the fields?

Any image handy of those base Yorks?

I think Rob may have been referring to die-making standards, as this had been the general tenet of my enquiry, though I’m sure you’ll have an answer regardless 😊 @Rob in view of the die never belonging to a crown I concede to the idea then that the large inner circle is nothing other than poor marking out, whatever the reason for that.

Loving the read, Rob, where’s your book? I clearly know very little about all this, but I still get the sense there would be time to ‘do things properly,’ if they wanted to? For someone whose sole job it is to cut dies, would they really make such a glaring error re the inner circle? I can’t get my head around that. Also, if they did, I get the impression there’d be an option to scrap it - I think they would notice the error really early on. Can you think of any reason why they haven’t just used a crown die by accident, or even intentionally, just to make use of them?

The 3a die looks to be different entirely, letters and single stop from wire line etc.?

So what possibility is there that the die-sinkers stayed in a fixed location, where it would be possible to cut dies without the inconvenience of constant marches (I feel I want to escape the idea it was all so chaotic, and look to other possibilities re major anomalies), where one would assume die making to be a bit of a challenge otherwise? Also smelting plate and turning it into flans on a regular basis would equally seem an impossible task for troops constantly on the march? Is there any value in the idea that dies, once completed, were transported to the source of the plate/flans/troops for use by coiners, or maybe even the plate was horsebacked to a fixed location/mint to be processed and returned to the front line? You’re probably right in what you’re saying, but war efforts can be incredibly organised, logistically speaking, and it would seem to make more sense to keep your die-sinkers and their tools in a safe location away from the perils and risks of frontline troops. Do we know of any die-sinkers being killed in battle? edit to add “once completed” in second paragraph

Interesting read, thanks for taking the time. Do we know whether those who strike coins are the same are those who sink dies? It would seem a waste of skilled workers (engravers) employing them to the menial task of hammering out coins.

The shilling is compelling evidence but I just can’t buy the idea they’d make the most basic of errors in failing to scribe out an accurate inner circle, given how much more complicated (and time consuming) it would be to lay out legends, etc. if they don’t get these most basic of markings on the stock first? One would presume them experienced enough to realise this? It would even cross my mind to get that bit right, regardless of the rush I was in. As well as cutting punches and repairing/making dies, I would naturally assume, if there was a large turnover, that stocks could be filed and marked out in advance, in preparation to be cut - that would streamline things, surely? Unless this is exactly what they did do, and then someone started cutting a halfcrown onto stock that was prepared/scribed-out for a crown? another thing that troubles me, is I can’t imagine it taking a huge amount of time to cut a die, once the punches are made and to hand, so why wouldn’t they just file and recut/scrap an error die? I know you say time was short, but is there any evidence to say that the die-sinkers couldn’t keep up with demand (die-making, not coins struck)? I have another question, why were stocks ground back and reused anyway? The metal they were made from was hardly an expense, relatively speaking. The time and cost involved to reverse the annealing, and then file off the old design, must surely outweigh the cost of new and ready to roll diestock - or at least make the use of new stocks a negligible expense? Actually I guess the above question is irrelevant in that menial labour could file and prepare new stocks. Though interestingly it should make abandoning an error die an easier process, if perhaps only a half-day or less is lost in the time it takes to cut a new die. I wonder whether hundreds of dies were filed off to start over this way to be honest? I just can’t buy the idea that rushing to make them is the cause for a mis-scribed circle. Or, if it was, they wouldn’t just scrap it when realising, presumably quite early on in the process of punching it all up? Just thinking out loud.

So, is your proposal that the reverse was intended for a larger denomination, say a crown, but was never used and, instead, was reclaimed for the halfcrown, OR that the die stock of a larger denomination was ground back and a half crown was cut into it? If the latter, I can’t fathom why they wouldn’t have marked out the beaded borders correctly before cutting the design?