Making A Mint

Every summer, within a specialist centre known as "La plateforme des arts du feu", the small town of Melle in the French department of Les Deux-Sèvres becomes a stage for experimentation in ancient metallurgy. It is here that a research team is trying to recreate all the stages involved in minting coins just as it was done in the Graeco-Roman era. As a model, they are taking the silver owl of Athens that was struck in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. However, the process proves to be problematic. The obstacles encountered by the team reinforce the researchers conviction that further experimentation is required before the production methods of ancient minting can be fully understood.

[CaptainMyCaptain]

I own a living mint that does this exact same thing, except we focus on a number of coinage. Since 2012 we've been doing Spanish cob coinage which has been by far the most interesting and fun. We study everything from how the dies were made to how the blanks were produced, what type of tools where used to trim the blanks and the methods the coins were struck.
It, incredibly has made myself an expert at spotting fake coins. Because I understand how the coins were made after all these years now and can say they are insanely hard to replicate even for the most skilled die sinkers.
We just started learning the rocker die methods this year and it's been fun but challenging.
We sell the replicas to keep the projects going. It's a lot of fun.

[ancientcoincollector]

Exceptional experiment. Thank you for sharing this with us. I would be pleased to get more informations regarding the final results of these studies.
What an amount of effort and work...my respect!

[anthonyvoight]

If you put the mold on a angle and have it molded to flow down the middle and have the sprouts run to the coin from the middle. I think you’ll have better results as it gathers it’ll chill blocking the flow.

[awestruckworkshop]

Excellent video, thank you for posting! I think what you've discovered with the silver experiment is how Spanish colonial cob blanks would have been made. They are not as precisely weighted as ancient coinage.The sprue bases on opposite ends of the flan would have been hammered flat with the rest of the blank, and then struck between the dies. The reminiscent sprue bases are visible in specimens from that era (1/2R, 1R, 2R, 4R, and 8R silver denominations from the 17th century Potosi mint for example). 

[robertjilano]

I'm curious as to why they aren't anealing the blanks before the hammer strike? Probably because the tourists. It'd take too long to heart each individual blank. But i bet hot flans took the design better and was not ad bad on the dies

[EvelynneHayes]

Did you try annealing the silver blanks and hot striking. Also did you think about redressing the faces of the dies as the images fade. From what found researching this topic Medieval dies were good for about 10, 000 strikes before having to be replaced. the faces often cleaned up and the shank of the die mushrooming out to a point it was unusable. The face being made of steel would be cut off of the wrought iron shank. But that was Medieval money. If I recall for Greco coins the blank was cast using standardized masters in molds of clay. the blanks would then be hot struck to ease in transferring the images on the dies. It can be seen where on some coins the blanks started splitting. I hope this helps.

[greatwalldesign]

My guess is that the ancient Romans measured the weight of gold/silver shot before filling the tray with it and then melting it. This method would allow them to skip the whole step of carving channels and pouring it, which saves a lot of the sloppy work in this video. The next experiment to confirm my guess would to see if you can melt silver while its in that sand tray you created.

[anthonypoole]

simple they used wood and steel molds. they poured larger sums at a time as well. the stamping you got right but in most likely situation they used an offset anvil to stamp where the anvil has a hole to hold the die.

[kingblue]

Wouldn't just used the lost wax method for molds or just a bronze mold where you just melt the silver or gold into shot weight it then pour the metal into the mold. That seems quite easy to do

[lancelottavola]

this is not the technique the romans use to make the coin flans, they melt individual silver correct in weight inside mold cavities that no need to cut, go direct to strick, same system as the greeks.

[Statevector]

This is great! Since these initial experiments, has the team been able to identify a specific mold that has resulted in more consistent weights of the coin blanks? Or is this still an open research question?

[macspartan]

I own a genuine Athens, Attica tetradrachm from 440 to 404 BC.

[tdtyyuf]

Could the coins they are making in the video trick professionals and pass as genuine?

[johng]

Voir comment la fonte a était réalise me fait mal au chez un bon bijoutier et il vous explique la procédure adéquate..

[garymyers]

Your weights are all off because you do t pour coins. You cut coins

[scg-qxvj]

Y a engañar a los incautos coleccionistas noveles🤬