How Far Back Can We Go? Fourth Edition! Ended At 1461 Waiting On 1460 C. E. (A. H. 864)

@1c5d7n5m, one of the things about Levinson's book is the great detail that he provides about the specific minting cities. I'll share some of the specific details and quotes that he provides below for each of the Dreisteden, but the basic answer is that @louie and I are only able to purchase what is for sale and the early dated coins of Deventer are simply more available (and for lower prices).

Kampen: There are five known varieties of dated coins from 1480, 1485, 1486, and 1488 AD. Considering their rarity, there is a total of 10 or 11 coins available outside museum collections (in other words, only one or two examples of each date is in private hands).






Zwolle: There are ten known varieties of dated coins from 1488, 1492, 1495, 1497, and 1499 AD. Considering their rarity, there is a total of approximately 50 coins available outside museum collections.






Deventer: There are about 40 varieties of dated coins that cover the range of 1458 to 1500 AD. Not every year is represented, but several varieties are listed as "Very Scarce", which corresponds to an estimated population of 50-100 collectible coins. As it turns out, that '72 Stuiver that I posted a few days ago is one of them. All in, I'd estimate that there are 500 collectible early dated coins from Deventer.






Dreisteden: Finally, I would like to point out that the Dreisteden minted Stuivers, Half Stuivers, and Quarter Stuivers in 1488 AD, with a mintmark of D, C, or Z. The estimated collectible population for all three mints and three denominations is roughly 75 coins.

thanks for your explanation Spence

It depends of course on the number of collectors that are really interested, but extrapolated to other area's of provincial Dutch coins, 20-100 coins outside musea is reasonable, while 10-20 or less means very stiff competition when a new kid shows up on the block.

The Silver Benelux of Delmonte (which starts around the 1540ies with guilders of Charles V) uses R1 to R4 as rarity index. It is a bit fuzzy what it means exactly today, but the way I interpret is: R4 (2-4 available items), R3 ( 5-10), R2 (11-25) and R1 (26-100); perhaps the same index applies to the early dated coins we are looking at these days.

When musea decide to reorganize their collections, an opportunity may arise for private collectors. On example was the (infamous) multi-center auction of the Huntington collection, very interesting for collectors of rare to very rare big silver pieces from the Spanish Netherlands.
Another more modest example I remember is a decision of the Historisch Museum Deventer, which has a huge coin collection (largely originating from a gift in the 19th century from Willem Herman Cost Jordens). Less than a decade ago the museum decided to re-register an digitize the entire collection (>10.000 items). Coins that fitted less well were first offered to collections in other musea in the Netherlands, those that were still left over were auctioned at Schulman b.v. in Amsterdam. I was very lucky with a winning bid (for a fair price) on a type 1b leeuwendaalder (Delm.830) pictures of which I posted before http://goccf.com/t/298137#2604907. Looking again into the auction Schulman catalogue 345 it is very clear: not one early dated 3-rijkssteden or Deventer coins was auctioned.

@1c5d7n5m, the stated rarities in The Early Dated Coins of Europe 1234 - 1500 are:




An interesting side note is that Levinson actually doesn't use R1 in his book, but rather just the letter R and so this appears to be a typo. Overall, the book is incredibly well written, but there are a few typos that crept into this first edition. Hopefully, they will be fixed if and when a second edition is in the works.

For today's coin, mine is similar to @louie's, but from a different mint in Saxony (Leipzig rather than Colditz). The mintmarks are six pointed stars and double crosses, respectively. The attribution on this Horngroschen is Levinson I-127 and Krug 1459.

interesting coins for 1469, @louie and @ Spence

must have Levinson's book and study it
the rarity index makes sense, it is a bit more detailed than that of Delmonte

the borderline 250 between common and scare could have been made with the assumption that this field has approximately 250 collectors everyone could obtain one piece

what is fascinating is that both supply (new coin hoards discovered) and demand can change over time
for instance, a popular CCF thread could boost the number of collectors

I did forget about Karl Stephens as a source. I have mostly bought Polish coins from him (no pre-1500 dates), but I did get a nice Brabant 1498 Toison d'Or from him many years ago. Given his good selection of central Europe coins, I suppose he sometimes has early dated German and Austrian that I never noticed.

Nice clear date, which is rare for the Horngroschen. This one from the Leipzig mint.

Another with Roman numerals.

These are all 1468 Hungarian Denars under Matthias Corvinus.

1. B-S mint mark;Huszar 717,Unger 562d,Pohl 216-4,Rethy II235A.




2. h-T mint mark;Huszar 717,Unger 562g,Pohl 216-7,Rethy II235A.




3. K-K/shield mint mark;Huszar 717,Unger 562h,Pohl 193-1,Rethy II235A.



4. n-cross/horseshoe mint mark;Huszar 717,Unger 562n,Pohl 216-14,Rethy II235A.