More on test cuts

Ian wrote:
snipGiven that `test cutting=B4 was occurring in different locations
and being done by farmers, butchers, bakers, and candelstick
makers......one would expect that different test cutting methods would
be applied (diversity in action). I haven=B4t studied them, but on the
ones I have seen these test cuts look almost professionally inflicted.
Maybe I just haven=B4t seen enough of them.
Ian,
I have only seen the pics here. No idea how they would have been done.
I am thinking perhaps not everyone did do this. Perhaps the receivers
of these in payment just looked for the cut?
Doris

Calling all Australians!!!!
Please read. ta
http://home.iprimus.com.au/wpbalcombe/

Ian wrote:

(cut) ;-)

I guess so Alan. However, if you were the person doing the test cut,
would you be bothered to use a soft wood surface?.

If I didn't want to make change, yes.

Chances are (back
then) that if you were presented with an `owl' in payment for goods or
services and wanted to test it for being of good metal, you would need
to find a mallet and a chisel in the first place, and having done so I
would very much doubt if you would be much concerned if the coin was
`whacked' on a piece of pine wood (or cedar) or the nearest paving slab
or boulder.

The time to do that is before accepting it in payment. I'd suggest that
it was circulating as 'good money' with no questions asked. It's a
banker or jeweler or the state itself that needed 'proof' the coin
wasn't a counterfeit that did the testing.


With all the possibilities of surfaces that could be used and all the
different implements that could be used for inflicting the would, you
would surely expect to see at least some `owls' with flattening to the
obverse due to being struck while on a hard surface?

I haven't seen any and that is what I am finding so intriguing. Maybe I
just need to look harder and at more of them (?)

However, I am beginning to think that it is more likely than not that
these test cuts were `professionally' applied.

I'd tend to buy into that speculation.

Alan

Alan & Erin Williams wrote:
Ian wrote:

(cut) ;-)

I guess so Alan. However, if you were the person doing the test cut,
would you be bothered to use a soft wood surface?.


If I didn't want to make change, yes.

A good point and one which backs up the supposition that whoever was
doing it would need a certain amount of `experience' in order to assess
the right amount of force in the right location (and on the right
supporting surface). I would not expect the average artisan / ordinary
citizen to have that knowledge. Now then...Moneyers /
jewellers...bullion assayers...yes. It's their stock and trade.

Chances are (back

then) that if you were presented with an `owl' in payment for goods or
services and wanted to test it for being of good metal, you would need
to find a mallet and a chisel in the first place, and having done so I
would very much doubt if you would be much concerned if the coin was
`whacked' on a piece of pine wood (or cedar) or the nearest paving slab
or boulder.


The time to do that is before accepting it in payment.

Of course. This is one of the factors which leads me to think that
testing was done in `bulk'.

I'd suggest that
it was circulating as 'good money' with no questions asked. It's a
banker or jeweler or the state itself that needed 'proof' the coin
wasn't a counterfeit that did the testing.


I'd certainly go along with that.

It could even have been done by the state to prove `good siller' was
being put up as payment to foreign states or traders. Possibly with the
testing even being done right in front of them.

There's an awful lot of classical type `owls' bearing test cuts on them.
Many times more than there are those without (as far as I can tell). I
wonder if they would actually have found their way back into normal
circulation after having been so `tested'. I actually suspect not for a
number of reasons, but who knows? Certainly not I.


With all the possibilities of surfaces that could be used and all the
different implements that could be used for inflicting the would, you
would surely expect to see at least some `owls' with flattening to the
obverse due to being struck while on a hard surface?

I haven't seen any and that is what I am finding so intriguing. Maybe I
just need to look harder and at more of them (?)

However, I am beginning to think that it is more likely than not that
these test cuts were `professionally' applied.


I'd tend to buy into that speculation.


The share certificates are being printed as we speak..... :-)

Alan

Ian

`a very small shard from an athenian owl which has been walloped too
hard during testing (or rather, its modern day value equivalence in UK
currency) for your thoughts '

Reid Goldsborough wrote
Your point being? ... test cuts into the reverse edge and
fields that miss the owl completely.
... what "known facts" exactly does my Egyptian farmer
scenario contradict?
And what's the point?
That these test cuts didn't take place in antiquity?
That they're fake?

I never can figure out if you really do not get the point or if you
prefer to pivot on the point in order to bring the debate into an
orientation that gives you an advantage in taking the offensive.

Your "More on Test Cuts" posts here suggest to me that you are a
couple of years away from publication. Of course, you could interview
expert dealers at coins shows, which has worked well for you in the
past. So has putting a fat worm on a sharp hook here in this
newsgroup and getting good replies. In fact, you got some already.

One fact that has been pretty much ignored is that it is almost impossible to
cut through plating without ruining the coin. The plating tends to wrap around
the edge of the tool - chisel, knife, saw - so that the sides of the cut show
plating, not the core metal. Try this with a copper-plated zinc cent and you
will see what I mean.
Of the theories advanced so far I tend to favor the use of a die as the
support. Breen said that this was how the "CAL" was added to the coins without
deforming them. I have seen a number of instances of fake hub doubling on Trade
dollars, which had been placed on (hard) wood, which picked up the design and
transferred it to subsequent coins chop marked on the block.
Alan Herbert

On Wed, 6 Aug 2003 06:13:55 -0400 (EDT), (so ne)
wrote:

I am thinking perhaps not everyone did do this. Perhaps the receivers
of these in payment just looked for the cut?

Correct. Not all ancient coins were test cut. I don't know what the
percentage is. I don't remember reading anything about this. I'll
hazard a guess (emphasis on hazard) that it was somewhere around 15
percent).

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On Wed, 06 Aug 2003 09:13:25 +0100, Ian
wrote:

It is probably going right up to the bounds of credibility to suggest
that the coins were minted with the `test cut' already prevalent (mind
you, stranger things have happened), but I am beginning to think that
whoever placed those test cuts on these coins were quite skilled in the
process. There must have been a `knack' to it by all apparencies.

Your first premise here isn't realistic. Looking at the coin, you can
see how the metal was displaced. These cuts weren't engraved into the
dies. Your second premise is more realistic. I suspect that a certain
percentage of coins that were test cut were cut in half by mistake.
But again, given the thickness of the earlier coins (think in terms of
nugget or ingot rather than disk or platter), it would have taken far
greater force to do this than to mere cut into the coin.

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On 06 Aug 2003 13:33:14 GMT, (AnswerMan2) wrote:

Of the theories advanced so far I tend to favor the use of a die as the
support. Breen said that this was how the "CAL" was added to the coins without
deforming them.

Using this logic, that creating a test cut must produce an effect on
the opposite side (which I don't agree with), if you use a die into
which you place a coin for test cutting, you would have to use the
exact die of the coin being test cut to avoid a die producing a double
struck type effect on the other side. The dies of ancient coin
differed from one another far greater than the dies of modern coins.

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On 6 Aug 2003 06:06:57 -0700, (High Plains
Writer) wrote:

I never can figure out if you really do not get the point or if you
prefer to pivot on the point in order to bring the debate into an
orientation that gives you an advantage in taking the offensive.

Your "More on Test Cuts" posts here suggest to me that you are a
couple of years away from publication. Of course, you could interview
expert dealers at coins shows, which has worked well for you in the
past. So has putting a fat worm on a sharp hook here in this
newsgroup and getting good replies. In fact, you got some already.

This is a discussion. Yes, I may in one of my articles in the future
mention test cuts. But I'm not fishing for ideas about them here!
Though it is interesting reading some of these ideas. If in the future
I decide to delve into this deeply, I'd find everything published I
could, talk with numismatists with experience in ancient coins as well
as expert ancient coin dealers, and look at as many test coins as I
could find in person as well as in books and catalogs. I'd present the
various idea and theories, which inevitably would conflict with one
another, and offer an opinion on which to me, given the evidence and
the logic, made the most sense, and why. What I wouldn't do is seek to
show how everybody else is wrong and put forth my own answer that I'd
contend is obviously right.

What I also wouldn't do is destroy a $200 ancient coin by test cutting
it myself. This, incidentally, would reveal no useful information in
that the silver of ancient coins is crystallized, making its
metallurgical characteristics much different from recently minted
silver, including but not limited to being far more brittle. And test
cutting a modern silver coin, which is far thinner than most ancient
Greek coins, would also reveal no useful information. One way you
could create a similar situation would be to obtain a recently minted
ancient coin replica, which typically cost under $20, and take a
chisel to it. This would still only approximate the experience in
ancient times in that (good) silver replicas are .999 silver while the
silver content of ancient Greek coins was somewhat less than this.

You seem to be denigrating the interviewing of expert dealers as a
research technique. Why? And your saying I've got my facts wrong
without divulging what facts I have wrong is bad Usenet form.
Whatever. Enjoy yourself.

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On Thu, 7 Aug 2003 00:11:23 +1000, "A.Gent"
wrote:

Trust me on this one, Reid.
You belt a coin hard enough to produce a deep trench, and the other side
suffers. Newton's third.

So how would you then explain when and why these test cuts were made?

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