Making your own coins?

What do I need to do/have to make some? Just in order to make some fantasy coins/tokens. I hope since there was a mintmaster in every army 2000 years ago it didnt get any more complicated?

PS I've seen companies that offer them at $2 a piece, but thats not what i am looking for.

PPS Is it possible to use some foreign coins as plains for striking?

 

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Ask the Chinese....

Seriously, I think we have enough "fantasy" coin makers.

 

Making the coins would be easy...it's making the dies to strike them that would be the challenge.
Guy~

 

Casting is MUCH easier! But the final product will look cheaper.

Here's a thread from when I tried it:
http://www.cointalk.com/t90198/

 

I have always wanted to start a smalltime mint to just produce medals for things like local charity evens, but yes the dies would be the biggest challenge. I haven't completely given up hope though!

 

So how they were making dies 2000 years ago?

 

Here are a couple of references. The first will give a good start IMO.

But the best resource I know is Charles M. Larson's book Numismatic Forgery. It takes the process from beginning to end!

Jim

http://www.archaeologystudent.com/coinarch/paper.htm

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~ciccone/html/production.htm


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Sounds like fun

 

tokens?

Be sure to stay legal. Then, by all means, do your thing. If, your art/craft is in making coins, then that would be lovely. You might do better as an artist marketer to another established business.

Good Luck. Also, you might consider the legal ramifications to creating tokens. In the event our coinage were ever interrupted, such a service could be desirable.

 

Very cool information. I did not know or even think about how hard it would have been to make a die so many years ago. Wow, it is like the pyramids and how they were built with nothing to lift up all those heavy heavy rocks. It amazes me what humans can and will do when they put there mind to something

 

You say that it could take an engraver a month to produce a set of dies. Can you provide a citation for that?

 

If you didn't want to do everything the way the ancients did, Larson's book is still a primary guide. He shows how to cast, using modern materials for the lost wax technique, how to prepare a die, not from "cutting" as normally done, but from thick nickel plating the model and removing the thick plate as a die for copper, gold, or silver. Obviously, you couldn't use it for nickel alloys.

For all of the Gun "lovers" who want to make dies, he has a 3rd method, called explosive impact copying , where he uses a 10 gauge single shot shotgun to produce the die. With CNC router machines under $2000, I would opt out of this method, but it makes very interesting reading.

 

What about using acid to etch the design?

 

What your equipment might look like:
http://www.shirepost.com/ShopTour.html

Don't overlook hammers if you plan short production runs. It worked for our ancestors for a long time.

 

If you are luck to be in a location that has a Renaissance Fair or grop from the Society of Creative Anachronisms , they often have a "coiner" creating "coins" using the hammer and anvil method. (This would have been the type that all the military divisions that had their own coiners back during the roman or medieval would have used.) And if you want to use a press, but a screw press is too hard to make you could always try a drop press.

 

What you're looking for in the SCA is the "moneyer's guild". If you get a blank look from your local chapter, ask for the minister of arts and sciences, whose job it is to keep track of who's doing what.

 

You could always order some custom dies.

http://www.osbornecoin.com/customdies.htm

http://www.bexengraving.com/