The Lovely Lowly Liard

Ah!

Like the Spanish Inquisition, I did not expect (or suspect) the Channel Islands.

With the leopard/lion hint I thought of England, but silly me I focused too much on their previous mainland continental presence.

I am actually glad I missed the mark. Your last chapter read was way more enjoyable having no prior knowledge.


Indeed. A wonderful journey worthy of a bookmark.

For what it is worth, this topic has inspired me to start looking at Liards on ebay. I am definitely going to seek them out at the next coin show. Who know what will happen next!

Well, we can make an estimate. We know that a liard is 2 centimes in early 19th century French coinage. This is 0.02 francs and consequently about 0.004 US dollars (there being about 5 francs in a dollar).

Some purchasing power parity calculators suggest that this would come out to about 12 cents in modern money (exact values vary between the calculators and depending on the exact conversion years). Two liards for a quarter, ish.

Obviously older liards were probably worth more at the time.

Wow, I came in fairly late to this epic and very interesting read. I have a small amount of liards, and a fistful of Guernesey doubles, but I had no idea of the connection. Thank you so much erafjel, an absorbing tale indeed.

Fantastic thread, congratulations erafjel

I discovered this gem within CCF only today. Never too late ....
The idea of a map with chapters is really good and applicable to any field of coin or medal collection.
Of epic proportions indeed. You may consider publishing the information in the thirty chapters in book format, it makes sense to me

I can't contribute any liards, but perhaps I may add one point that extends the scope of these small coppers in the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands.
It was common practice in the16th and 17th centuries to used rekenpenningen/jetons as real money and the value was equal to one oord/liard. See this wiki page https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo..._Lage_Landen paragraph "Gebruik als Geld"

The resemblance between liards and jetons is more outspoken in the Spanish Netherland (reign of Philippe II till Charles II) especially on the obverse side showing portrait and official titles of the ruler, leaving "artistic freedom" for the reverse side, which is fun.

Here are a few examples I can post:

Philippe II Northern Provinces Dordrecht, Holland 1564


Philippe II Northern Provinces, Utrecht 1570



Philippe II Southern Provinces 1571


Philippe II Southern Provinces 1586, praising Alexander Farnese




Archdukes Albert & Isabella Antwerp 1599


Archdukes Albert & Isabella Antwerp 1600


Archdukes Albert & Isabella Antwerp 1607


Archdukes Albert & Isabella 1609


Philippe IV 1651


Philippe IV 1660


Charles II 1671


Charles II 1679


Especially during the reign of Philippe II and the Archdukes, the artistic freedom associated with making jetons (instead of the strict rules in the design of official liards) could serve the goal of political propaganda as a psychological channel to support the never ending (in the end it would be 80 years) of war of independence of the Netherlands; this aspect drew my attention at a certain moment, so I started collecting them....

Thank you for the kind words, @1c5d7n5m. I'm glad you enjoyed it!


That is an interesting piece of information, I did not know that. And those are great examples you provide!

Sounds like a good plan, Moniker!