How Far Back Can We Go? Fifth Edition! Ended At 1461 Waiting On 1460 C. E. (A. H. 864)

First, two wonderful coins!

It is interesting to compare this "coordination" among different nation/states in Europe at this time. In @t360's French coins of the Louis (XIII/XIV) we saw great coordination/standardization of design acroiss the many mints/regions, and I think we will even see this in the reign of Henry III? (I will let others with more experience in France comment).
In the Polish-Lithuania commonwealth, on the other hand, we still saw differences in the design of the Sigismund large silver in the 1610s and 1620s which were posted here, with the Gdansk mint using the Gdansk city arms reverse, but the coins from Bydgoszcz mint using the Poland-Lithuania national arms.
In the next (earlier) reign of Stefan Bathory we will again see Gdansk, Vilnius and Riga with their own reverse designs, even if there is some attempt to make the obverse the same.

1586 -- Kingdom of Hungary, 1 denar:

Nice detail on that second liard. I am looking for a 1587, and have noticed that the date is often strong on this type, but the portrait usually quite worn.

I will stay in Poland for the next 9 years. Stefan Batory reigned as monarch of the Poland-Lithuanian commonwealth (including parts of the Duchy of Livonia) from 1576 to his death in 1586. He was a Hungarian prince who married Anna Jagiellon, sister of the last Jagiello king of Poland-Lithuania, and was elected king after Henry III of France forfeited the crown to ascend the throne of France.

1586 trojak, Riga mint.

I'm curious what he thought of this facial feature being displayed so prominently in his portrait on coins (we'll also see it on coins from the Vilnius and Gdansk mints). It first shows up a Gdansk grosz I'll post for 1578.
When Batory was elected, there was a faction in Poland (bishops and nobility) who had wanted a Hapsburg elected king instead. Gdansk refused to acknowledge his sovereignity, and Batory marched there with an army and laid siege in 1577. After 6 months, there was a negotiated settlement. Gdansk paid 200,000 zloty in reparations (a large sum for a small place), and Batory agreed to extend certain rights the city had enjoyed under previous kings.
I wonder if the Gdansk engraver decided his portrait of the king would remind the burghers of Gdansk that his legitimacy was not without blemish? And other mints followed suit.

Looks like a museum ID number. To my mind, it does not detract. Some collectors view these favorably as authentication.

Well, I can say something about France

France has always had a large number of mints spread over the country, and until the mid 16th century each mint engraved its own dies based on drawings and written descriptions dispatched from the central mint in Paris. Naturally, a large variation in appearance resulted, but the important aspect was really that weight and alloy were correct. When in the early 16th century coins began to have the king's portrait, not only did the dissimilarities between coins from different mints become an issue, also the widely varying quality of the portrait was disturbing. While the countryside engravers mastered letters, crosses, and fleur-de-lis well enough, a portrait was something quite different, and not everyone was good at it. It is not easy to judge from the testons with the image of Francis I what he really looked like - although there seems to have been agreement on a prominent nose

So, in 1547, Henry II instituted the office of engraver general (graveur general). He made the dies for the Paris mint and he also made punches with the king's portrait to be used by the other mints, for the making of their dies. This improved both quality and uniformity of the coins' appearances. The office was reinstated in a somewhat different form by Louis XIII in the 1640s and then lasted until 2001 (although the last 130 years or so distribution of punches was no longer required, with all coins minted in one location).

There was still some intentional variation between coins from different mints. For instance Navarre, Bearn, Flanders, and Dauphine used variations of coat of arms, inscriptions, and symbols - although the basic design and portrait were the same.

thanks for your valuable comments ! an old collection is quite likely

authenticity is an issue - this jeton and some others I (e.g. my best jeton I'll post tomorrow) I picked up ±30 years ago are accompanied by circular old papers with a description of the piece; how old the papers are is hard to say, maybe 100 years