I’ve posted about this technique and its potential before but new features in MS PowerPoint make it even easier to make an image transparent.
So Schaefer’s archive only had one specimen illustrating controlmark Cr 174 = Babylon 145 and those of you familiar with Esty’s method for estimating the original number of dies know that the singleton count is really important. So I went looking for more with the help of Hersh’s unpublished work on control marks.
BINGO! Not a true singleton! BUT at first the Schaefer image was of a really worn coin and so I was unsure of the die match. (This may seems non-nonsensical with the controlmarks, but imitations exist and in a few cases more than one die was used per controlmark but that is really unusual on this series.) I decided to do a side by side first. AND then I confirmed the die link by using a transparent overlay. (RRC 384/1, Papius)
The Paris specimen in Gallica (better for images); and in BnF catalogue (better for searching)
