[Ansteorra] Steppes Moneyer's Guild presents royal gift

[Duncan Hepburn]

Stefan,

Yes, flans (interchangeably called planchets or blanks) are the blank
round pieces which become coins. The original penny this is based on is
silver, but we use pewter because it costs considerably less, and still
has a very similar appearance to silver. I buy the pewter in bulk, we
pour it into ingots, then roll the ingots into sheets, from which the
blank coins are cut.

Thanks for the pointers to coins in your Florilegium. I'll see what I
can do to dig up articles and class handouts for you.

Duncan

On Mon, 2008-07-28 at 16:31 -0500, Stefan li Rous wrote:
> Duncan,
> 
> You said: "The flans are 3/4 inch 95/5 pewter." What's a "flan"? Is  
> that the coin blank? If so, I thought you said there were silver  
> pennies, but here you are talking about pewter. If these are not the  
> blanks and you used some sort of silver, where did you get it? Even  
> if you are stamping from pewter, where did you find it in sheet form?  
> Or did you pour/roll your own?
> 
> For those interested in more information on coining and the history  
> of period coins, there are also these files in the COMMERCE section  
> of the Florilegium:
> coins-msg        (132K)  1/10/08    Period coins, making coins.
> p-Engsh-coins-lst (17K)  6/25/99    A list of period English coins
>                                         by Kestrel of Wales.
> 
> I still remember at my first big SCA event, an Estrella War about 18  
> years ago one of the Crowns presented to the other Crowns sets of  
> dies that they could use to stamp their own coins. I thought that was  
> very neat and considered getting into coining. However, with my poor  
> eyesight I decided the fine detail work of punching the dies would be  
> too difficult, so I went into pewter casting instead.
> 
> I know that there has been at least one article in TI over the years  
> about coin stamping, but if anyone, in the Moneyers Guild or not, has  
> written or would like to write an article on coin making, I'd love to  
> have it for the Florilegium.
> 
> Stefan
>