Eight Weeks Of Dated European Coinage (1234 To 1500 Ad)

Dear Petrus,

Please, remove all the no-dates somewhere else. And the 1502 too. They're not the point of this thread.

(The other two coins are in the correct place, fortunately.)

Sorry, I propably failed to understand ALL the rules for this thread.
All 'no-date's are removed.
I hardly know Levinson. I use some other catalogs (Vanhoudt, De Witte, Gaillard, Deschamps, Van Gelder/Hoc....)

Here is a Stuiver of the Netherlands' city of Deventer. It is 24 mm and 1.9 g and was minted in 1472 AD. The obv has two shields, a large one of Deventer and a smaller one of Oversticht. The obv inscription is MONETA NOVA DE DAVENTRIA while the rev inscription is ANNO DOMIN M CCCC LXXII. The rev devices are a long cross with the shield of Burgundy in the center and four annulets. The coin is attributed as Levinson III-58.

According to Levinson, Deventer was a "powerhouse of early dated coinage production, striking over 50 types, with 22 different dates and 9 denominations". This is more prodigious that almost any other medieval mint. That said, these don't come up all the time for sale and oddly the older coins seem to be a little more collectible than many of the newer ones. The decade of the 1470s likely contains the easiest coins to find.

Sorry, nothing from the northern Netherlands before 1500

Here is my final dated coin from the Northern Netherlands. It is a Stuiver dated 1499 from the Netherlands County of Holland. It is 28 mm in diameter and has a mass of 2.7 g. The obv legend is PHS DEI GRA ARCHID AVS B C HO and surrounds the shield of Austria-Burgundy. The rev legend is SIT NOMEN DNI BNE DIC TM 1&99 and surrounds a cross and quatrefoil. It was minted in Dordrecht and is attributed Levinson III-271a.

This coin was struck for Philip the Fair during his lifetime, but there is a very similar coin (Levinson III-271b) that is also dated 1499, but was struck by Charles V after the death of Philip. According to Wiklipedia, Philip the Fair died on September 25, 1506 of typhoid fever, or perhaps poisoning.

Starting tomorrow, we will move on to the fourth geographic region: The Habsburg Territories and Neighboring Lands.

Yep, Frey 1915 work was the seminal book on this subject. I don't own this book, but some of its limitations listed by Levinson include: smaller denominations were not always treated separately from larger denominations of the same issuer, inscriptions were usually not fully detailed, and multiple mistakes were made in reading the numerals in the dates.

Starting in 1978, David Cervin issued a series of supplements to Frey that cleared up many of the mistakes, but evidently the subject was still not completely cleared up as some Frey's mistakes were fixed, others were left unfixed, and additional errors were introduced. In fact Levinson lists nearly 120 known errors in the original Frey book as well as the Cervin reprints. From Levinson:






In my admittedly narrow-minded opinion, new collectors of early dated European coins should start with Levinson as their guide.

Continuing on with group four, here is a somewhat similar Kreuzer of the Austrian Duchy of Styria (minted in Graz). It is dated one year earlier than the previous one (and therefore is 1458 AD) and attributed as Levinson IV-5a. The diameter is 19 mm and the mass is 0.7 g. The obv inscription is FRI D G RO IMPERATOR and this surrounds a shield with a double-headed eagle. The rev inscription is MONETA IN GREZ 1&78 and this surrounds a shield in quarters. As you might have guessed, the numeral that looks like a modern, if slightly up-swooping, seven is actually a medieval five.

While it doesn't suffer from the flan cracks of the previous coin, there are multiple flat spots which detract from the value of this coin (or give it "character" if you are a glass half-full person). Of the forty or so dated coin varieties issued by Graz, this one is one of the most common--common being a relative word as there are fewer than 100 of these IV-5a coins actually collectible.

Equally as interesting, Graz minted five different varieties of Kreuzer dated 1458, some of which used the modern shape to for the numeral five. At least in this region of Europe, 1458 seems to be a transition year for the number five.

I have a 1500 Slazburg uniface pfennig listed in Levisson VI,65 but do not have a Levinson catalog. In the medieval coinage 1234-1500 site, it lists it as Sch. 4260.