Posted 08/27/2013 12:39 am
Yep. Reference to France's agricultural heritage was a really important gesture for France's initially shaky IIIrd Republic (fresh off defeat at the hands of the Prussians/aka the about-to-be-united-for-the-first-time Germans). The Ceres goddess busts, and the sower figure by Roty evinced 'timeless' icons of France's agricultural base, an important part of France's vision of itself as exceptional.
One would be tempted to take the Sower as a figure of the great Marianne, but strictly speaking I've never heard this to be an 'official' intent of the designer. The busts on the stamps, however, are of Marianne.
What you have showing is a 1990s era five franc proof coin, which appears to have wear even though it would have been very unlikely to have circulated. What year is it? Some of them are quite rare. The German lady on the 50 pfennig is planting a tree, not quite throwing seeds the way the French lady does. I quite like the modern West German coin designs, and when a chance comes along I always like to pick up a nifty proof set (recent vintages are very affordable).
The Austrian fellow on the 1 shilling looks like a Greek sculpture. Very nice; it's in aluminum, right? I don't have any decent specimens of this strike in my collection, I often wonder how easy it is to come by great quality examples of business strike aluminum mintages. (I do have some nice slabbed proofs.)
One would be tempted to take the Sower as a figure of the great Marianne, but strictly speaking I've never heard this to be an 'official' intent of the designer. The busts on the stamps, however, are of Marianne.
What you have showing is a 1990s era five franc proof coin, which appears to have wear even though it would have been very unlikely to have circulated. What year is it? Some of them are quite rare. The German lady on the 50 pfennig is planting a tree, not quite throwing seeds the way the French lady does. I quite like the modern West German coin designs, and when a chance comes along I always like to pick up a nifty proof set (recent vintages are very affordable).
The Austrian fellow on the 1 shilling looks like a Greek sculpture. Very nice; it's in aluminum, right? I don't have any decent specimens of this strike in my collection, I often wonder how easy it is to come by great quality examples of business strike aluminum mintages. (I do have some nice slabbed proofs.)
