Mintmarks For The French Ecu

SINBAD - Thank you. My coin is a 1783 French ecu which I recently purchased for my collection of foreign coins which circulated in the American colonies. On the obverse there appears to be the dipthong [ B) ] representing Strousburg [I think A = Paris, B = Rouen, D = Lyon]. On the reverse at the 6 o'clock position appears to be a lion. A castle or tower appears just before the date and after the word BENEDICTUM. The obverse legand is LUDXVI D G FR ET NA RE. Is the letter on the obverse the mint and the animal on the reverse the director of the mint (like the initials of the assayers on Spanish colonial coins)?

Pre-revolutionary French coins contain several "mint marks". First, there's the mintmark itself, usually a letter (but they started using other symbols and pictures when they ran out of letters). This was the symbol of the facility where the coin was made. On the ecu coins, this appears on the reverse, 6 o'clock position (beneath the Coat of Arms). If your symbol there looks like a "lion", then your coin is likely from the mint of Pau, whose mintmark was a cow.

Then there are two or more "privy marks", placed there by mint officials. The Engraver General, or later the Director General, was the chief bureaucrat responsible for coinage throughout the country; his mark would appear on every coin of a given date. In 1783, however, the Engraver General wasn't marking the coins.

The Mint Director was in charge of the particular facility. In Pau (cow) mint in 1783, the Director's privy mark was a "hand of Justice", which apparently looks like a hand making a two-fingered Boy Scout salute, stuck on the end of a stick. You should find this on the obverse, below the portrait.

The final mark is the local Engraver's mark - the guy who actually made the dies. At Pau in 1783, the engraver used a sheaf of wheat, which probably equates to your "castle tower".

So what's the "BD" monogram-thing on the obverse, after "RE"? It's actually part of the king's titles, not a mintmark. It stands for "Duke of Bearn" - this coin is technically one of the last remnants of the French Provincial issues, in the name of the Province of Bearn. "Normal" French coins don't have it - only coins from this mint. It's listed alongside the French coins in the 18th century Krause (KM# 572) for convenience.

Despite all that "specialness", it sadly doesn't add anything to the catalogue value - mintages for this coin from 1778 to 1788 were around a million a year - quite high, compared to most regional mints.

SAP - Thank you for that thorough explanation! I will probably have to buy the Krause book for 18th century coins, since my collection of foreign coins that circulated in the American colonies are in the 18th century. The 1783 ecu is in VF, purchased on ebay for $86. They are fairly common but do represent the coin of the realm in early New Orleans and the French territories. The denominations of pre-Revolution coins, as I learned from an internet site, roughly correspond to thge British system (eg, 1/5 ecu coin corresponded to the shilling which was 1/5 of a crown). The "French crown" is listed in a table of coin values in Father Abraham's Almanack published in 1759.

Ah yes Bearn

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