Hand striking, sometimes referred to as hand hammering, was the primary means of minting coins in the ancient and medieval periods. This process involved affixing the lower die to an anvil, placing a heated flan (blank coin) on top of that die and then placing the upper or hammer die on top of the flan. This left the flan sandwiched between the two dies. A heavy hammer was then used to forcefully strike the upper die, forcing the impressions from both dies into the surface of the flan. The result, if everything went well, was a hand struck coin of bold strike and incomparable beauty.
Hand striking was the dominant minting technique for the first 2,200 years after coinage was invented – from about 650 BC to 1550 AD. There are good reasons why this was the case. It was relatively cheap and required little technology to achieve good results. However, as any connoisseur of ancient or medieval coins can tell you, it had many drawbacks as well.
For one, it was easy to botch a strike. Making a mistake when hand striking could result in the coin being off center, weakly struck or double struck. In addition, flans were manually prepared as well, often resulting in cracked, undersized or otherwise flawed coin blanks. The final problem was the dies themselves. Because a coin’s design was hand engraved directly into either bronze or iron dies, the artistic style of motifs and lettering, along with other important aesthetic qualities, could vary considerably from one set of dies to the next.
All of these factors combine to make ancient and medieval coinage both incredibly exhilarating and unbelievably frustrating. It is exhilarating to hold a millennia old ancient coin of impossibly high relief and superlative style in the palm of your hand. It is simultaneously both a work of art and a piece of living history. It is equally frustrating when searching for a particular pre-modern coin to only find sub-par specimens with poor style and bad striking again and again.
It also means that ancient or medieval coins from the same series with the same design can look dramatically different. One example may be a masterpiece while another, ostensibly identical coin, may be a dog. Coin investors should take note; eye appeal and pricing can vary greatly due to striking and style. And that is before considering the condition of a coin!
There are a few guidelines when collecting ancient and medieval hand struck coins. First, greater care in the striking process was invariably taken with coins of higher intrinsic value. So, generally speaking, ancient and medieval gold coins tend to exhibit good striking characteristics, well prepared flans and finely engraved dies. Bronze coins, in contrast, are the ugly ducklings of pre-modern coinage. They are often poorly struck, minted on irregular, dumpy flans and possess little eye appeal.
Exceptions do exist however, like the stately bronze Sestertius and Dupondius of the Roman Empire, along with the magnificent, huge bronze coins of ancient Ptolemaic Egypt. Silver coins fall in between gold and copper in terms of average striking characteristics. Sometimes quality is excellent, like on ancient Greek silver staters and tetradrachms. Other times it is bad, as on some of the early medieval silver issues from the kingdoms of the Indian subcontinent.
Even though some ancient coins were minted in very large quantities by the standards of the day, they are still exceedingly rare compared to modern issues. A set of ancient coin dies might have only lasted 15,000 to 30,000 strikes before wearing out. For example, it is estimated that about 17 million silver denarii were minted every year in the 2nd century AD during the height of the Roman Empire. This might seem like a lot until you consider that many modern issues from the United States exceed one billion minted per year! And ancient and medieval coins have suffered severe attrition over the centuries as well. Only a tiny fraction of their original mintages survive – and an even smaller fraction if you want a nice example with a fine strike in good condition.
In the mid 16th century, German silversmith Max Schwab invented the screw press. Coins created via the screw press are known as milled coinage. The screw press was a machine that, as the name implies, used a screw to maximize mechanical leverage in the striking process. It could be powered by either humans or animals, as required. The screw press, with its higher striking pressure, brought much needed consistency to the art of coining. Milled coinage, in sharp contrast to hand struck coinage, would be recognizable by today’s man on the street as effectively modern.
The development of the screw press was also accompanied by the invention of mechanical rolling mills and punches. Together, these machines heralded a new era of coin production. Flans were now far more regular in thickness and roundness than ever before. The screw press could even mint coins with reeded or lettered edges – an important safeguard in a world overrun with clipped, underweight coins. And die impressions were generally far stronger compared to hand hammered coinage, although weak strikes still occasionally occurred. Perhaps most importantly, as the mechanized screw press was refined, coins could be minted more quickly than with hand striking, leading to significantly larger volumes of coinage to facilitate burgeoning commerce.
Milled coinage was first adopted in France during the reign of Henri II (1547 to 1559) and in England during the reign of Elizabeth I (in the 1560s). Although technically superior to hand hammered coinage, milled coinage was soon abandoned by both France and England because of opposition from long-standing mint employees who were used to hand striking coins. They perceived the new screw press method as a threat to their continued employment as coiners. It wasn’t until almost a century later, in the 1630s and 1640s that milled coinage was readopted in France and England on a more permanent basis.
The rest of Europe adopted these new mechanical minting technologies piecemeal during the 16th and 17th centuries. By 1700 the vast majority of European coinage was minted via the screw press or its derivatives. I find this date – 1700 AD – to be a useful way to roughly delineate older, hand struck coinage from newer, mechanically struck coinage. However, I should note that some parts of the world – primarily India, Southeast Asia, parts of the Middle East and Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate – still struck coins by hand for many decades after 1700 AD.
Hand struck ancient and medieval coins have a unique charm all their own. But if you are interested in collecting them, it is important to understand the different technologies used in their manufacture. This maxim applies doubly if you are looking to invest in pre-modern coinage. Search for specimens that have well-centered, strong strikes on broad flans. Also be sure to choose coins rendered in fine style, as this attribute varied based on the skill of the die engraver. And above all, always buy coins with the best eye appeal you can find. It is a major indicator of desirability and, by extension, future price appreciation for ancient and medieval coins.
