49 Days Of Low Mintage US And World Coins

My only Standing Liberty quarter, therefore my lowest mintage.




1929
Mintage: 11,140,000

1928-S mintage 2,644,000
my lowest mintage example

Washington Quarters
1932-D 436,800
1932-S 408,000

You scratch my front, I'll scratch yours!

Very nice!

What's going on with the lips on the obverse of the Guam? Almost looks like a filled die giving ol' George the pouty lips?

Ancients day!

Since "ancient" encompasses about 2,000 years (600 BC until 1400 AD) I hope I can be forgiven for posting more than one coin!

Unknown, probably local imitation of Kushan type, ca. 150-400 AD


This one had experts on three different forums stumped. It's not in any reference catalog, and nobody has seen one like it before. I figure that speaks for itself?

Rome, Aemilian. August-October 253
Unlike some later short-lived emperors, Aemilian struggled to gain enough acceptance to have coins minted in his name, and was also declared a public enemy upon his death and non-hoarded coins were recalled. All of his coins are rare to very rare.


Constantine the Great
PROVIDENTIAE CAESS, Camp Gate or city fortification
Unpublished and likely unique mule from Trier, 3rd officina (T*AR), using a reverse of Crispus or Constantine II. Providentiae Caess means "foresight of the Caesars" and is not a legend the Emperor would have used. Trier's third mint office is not known to have produced any coins for Constantine at all. This is comparable to a 1999 WAM cent turning up from the Denver mint.



Crispus AE3
IVL CRISPVS NOB CAES
Laureate, consular bust right,
wearing trabea, eagle-tipped scepter in right hand.
BEATA TRANQVILLITAS, Globe on altar inscribed VO/TIS/XX, three stars above
Trier Mint
Mintmark Dot PTR dot
RIC 376, Rated R4, 3-5 known (in the 1980s... more have been found since)




A small selection of my favorite "barbarous" Roman coins, from ca. 265-350. These are poorly understood, but may have been:
1. Imitations made by the barbarians north of the Rhine
2. Emergency supplies of small change made by local blacksmiths, with or without official approval.
3. Attempts to counterfeit.

That said, while these coins as a whole are almost as common as regular coinage, these were made on a small scale with cheap equipment. Die matches are exceedingly rare to nonexistent, and most individual types probably had mintage runs in the low hundreds before a new die was required.




Huns in Sindh (Pakistan), ca. 600 AD
Sri Yashaaditya silver "obol"
Known from a single hoard of a few hundred, first discovered in 1990s.



Huns or Gurjuras in NW India, ca. 550-700 AD
Peroz-imitation type (the great-great-granduncle of the Gadhaiya Paisa)



I only currently own one, but note that these coins are a die match to each other. I purchased these about a year apart, ostensibly from different hoards. I have only ever seen these two, and the fact that they are die matches strongly supports the hypotheses that only a single die was ever made. This particular type (broad flan, large nose, no facial hair) is also quite rare itself.

Three types of English Medieval cut 1/2 penny.

With the single exception of a rare gold coin valued at twenty silver pence, the long cross coinage consists of a single denomination, the silver penny. Although small quantities of halfpennies had occasionally been struck since Saxon times, and a very small number of round halfpennies and farthings were minted towards the end of the short cross issue, the disproportionate cost of producing such small coins seems to have deterred the authorities from making any real effort.

The need for small change was nevertheless extremely acute. A penny, which represented approximately a day's pay for a skilled labourer, would buy two dozen eggs, two large loaves of bread or at least two gallons of ale. The solution, also adopted from the earliest times, was to cut the penny into halves and quarters. In fact, the voided cross design employed on the reverses of both the short cross and long cross coins was chosen to facilitate this measure.

The majority of cut coins have cleanly cut edges, which appear to have been made with an accurately positioned and sharp tool. A minority of them, however, show evidence of less skilled performance. Telltale signs include misaligned and multiple attempts at cutting, and irregular edges resulting from breaking the coin by repeated reverse bending. Such action would have been an obvious remedy whenever 'official' small change was not to hand.


John/Henry III Short Cross 1/2 Penny
Class 6b1 1208-1218
Unknown moneyer, London mint.

The condition of the money circulating in England in the 1240s was probably as bad as it had ever been. The coins were all of the short cross type introduced more than sixty years beforehand, and the last general recoinage had taken place in 1205. Inevitably a high proportion of the coins were badly worn, but more significantly many were also clipped - an illegal practice performed by unscrupulous individuals, who would melt down the resulting slivers of metal and profit by selling the silver.

In order to thwart would-be clippers, it was decided that the new coins would carry a design in which the reverse cross would extend to the edge. If any of the four cross-ends were removed, the coin would be deemed illegal.

The terms on which the recoinage was conducted, while lucrative for the king and his brother, were very onerous for the public. Anyone bringing their short cross coins to the exchange would receive only as many new pennies by weight as could be coined from those they deposited, regardless of face value. A further thirteen pence in every pound, over five percent, was charged for the expenses incurred in minting, which included a margin from which the earl and the king derived their profit. A chronicler of the time alleged that the man who brought in thirty shillings worth of old pence (360 pennies) got back little more than twenty shillings (240 pennies) in the new money.


Henry III Voided Long Cross 1/2 Penny
Class 3c-d 1249-1250
Moneyer Gilbert(Gilbert de Bonnington), Canterbury mint.
Gilbert de Bonnington was an ecclesiastical moneyer working for the archbishop of Canterbury


Edward I Long Cross 1/2d
London mint.
A major change brought about by the recoinage of 1279 was the introduction of three new denominations. In addition to the penny, there was the halfpenny, the farthing and the groat of four pence. The striking of round halfpennies and farthings eliminated the need to cut pennies into halves and quarters, another practice that dated back to the Anglo-Saxon period. The voided reverse cross, used on pennies for the previous one hundred years to facilitate this process, was thus no longer required, and was replaced by a plain cross.

Interestingly, this cut half seems to have been done unofficially after the introduction of the round half pennies and farthings. The process of cutting pennies was usually carried out at the mint, but this seems a rather more crude cut - perhaps someone in desperate need of small change.

1830 half dollar 4,764,800