Anybody got a solid idea on how coins from approximatly 1300 were made? I'm looking for the normal everyday pennies (not the gold coins) mostly made out of silver. I find lots of references on coins, but never on how they were produced. I know they were minted with dies, but how did they make the dies in those days? Were those iron dies? Casted or engraved? If engraved, how was that done? How was the iron hardened?

And how were the coin blanks themselves "cut out"? Out of a sheet of silver plate?

I'm looking for pure technical solutions. Anybody?

Resource (Intro to Medieval Bracteates)
(Holy Roman Empire (german) coinage)

Bracteate coins are the medieval German silver uniface group of coins. These regional coins supplimented the prior and current minted coins of Rome (denars or pfennings). What is of importance is that the diameter of these coins gradually increased, but the weight was unchanged. John Lhotka (author) has suggested that one of the reasons for these fragile coins (which could be crumpled between one's fingers) is to increase the economic value of them. (Some would be destroyed or not redeamable and they could make a profit on the difference between the face value of the coin vs it's actual metallic contents.)

Included in this text is an actual map that represents the areas where these coins were stamped from the Rhine including the Mainz area down to Basel & Konstanz. All the way to the Oder and Brandenburg region (poland).

What is helpful in studying these coins is that their obsolesence is due to thicker and other coins (not denar based) coming into use particularly at the end of the 14th and into the mid 15th centuries. Part of this is due to documentation that Bracteates (particularly large sized coins) were essentially no longer being struck by any major authority. Smaller coins (under an inch) continued to be struck by some localities into the 17thC and became to be known as hohlpfennigs.