1700's German States 20 Kreuzer Coin/Medal?

Thanks TDZ. I was trying to figure out if it was a coin or a medal. No date, but has a denomination. So, what's the verdict? Coin or medal?

Still not quite sure what it is, or where to find any documentation on it. Until proven otherwise, mine is an MS69.

@Jadey, I am not any kind of expert on German coins of this era, but I think there are a number of issues that are both "medallic," and have a currency value. There is a term called "medallic thalers" for larger denominations, and I think this may be an example of this conflation at a lower denomination. Again, this is just my guess. There are collectors who post about crowns who can probably comment, but they may not be seeing this post.

As for the condition of your coin, the link I provided says "unusual in this condition," for that example, and I think yours is perhaps a bit nicer (also with no adjustment marks). So, I think you have something pretty special there!




That just means CCF is ahead of the search engines (We all knew that, right? )

A wonderful coin! They are called variously "Gedenkthaler" or "Sterbegroschen" among other terms.

1763 CLR (Christoph Lorenz Ruckdeschel) - commemorative 20 Kreuzer (=1/6 Conventionsthaler) issue in remembrance of the death of Friedrich, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth -- a patron of the arts and sciences who enjoyed quite a fine reputation in Bayreuth. He passed away in 1763 at the age of 52. Yours appears to be gold washed silver, which is correct, and traces of the gold wash are still quite visible on the obverse. Unlike medallic Thalers and Dukats, which had no denomination, this issue was more along the lines of what we now call NCLT or non-circulating legal tender, despite the fact that many did circulate!

It's catalogued in Wamboltschen (Slg. Wamb. 2188) & Wilmersdörffer (Slg. Wilm. 768) -- a few recent examples I found range in price from 60 Euro (Kunker) to 110 Euro (Schimmer). Your particular example is fully struck; the odd lower reverse and rim may be due to misaligned dies as you suspect. Schimmer's example is graded SS (=US high VF) and your coin is better in every respect, a full VZ (=US EF) and choice in the grade. I certainly wouldn't sell it if I were lucky enough to own it -- it's a really beautiful, historic issue and well preserved.

@paralyse Thanks for all the excellent information. Any chance there are any links to these publications available online? I found the following link to the Wamboltschen, but it appears only to be an index without any pictures. Perhaps that is the extent of the book? I couldn't find anything for the second reference.

It is interesting about the gold washed silver. I was wondering what gave the coin such nice color. It also has a bit of rainbow toning on the obverse.

Also, the link tdziemia provided shows a recent sale in June 2018 realizing 200 EURO.

I'm pretty happy that I got this for $13 USD. I actually happened upon a whole batch of German coins for a good price at auction. The other bidders were just interested in spot pricing, so I was able to get a number of coins for just over spot. This was the only one I couldn't identify.

You have to use ASCII characters. Unicode gets translated to HTML which works in preview but not in the actual post.



I corrected it...

For $13 that is a heck of a deal!! Well done. I would value it between 150-200 Euro and possibly more if two bidders get excited; but that is in Germany. Here in the US demand (and bidding) is much lower unless you can get it in front of German States specialists.

Many of the German catalogs are not online, although Kunker's are. Go to your Google search options and add German as a search language. You will then see all of the German-only site results. Some of the more famous collections (Sammlung or Slg. in German) have been digitized and have photos online. The auction records of these collections are often used as reference. At other times there are numismatic references covering specific areas (e.g. Brandenburg commemorative ducats/thalers) that date back 100-200 years when photography was not widely available for reference books.

See, for instance:

https://books.google.com/books?id=h...026.&f=false

which references Künker auction #267 and the catalog ID of Slg. Wilm. 768 -- this is the Wilmersdörffer Collection, lot #768 in particular, auctioned off in 1925 by Otto Helbing in Munich.

@paralyse Just to be clear, I added the German languages to my google search options (learned something new), but what advantage does tha give me? Is the idea that I could type in a German passage and it would search based on that? Or, is it that it will return references to German publications?

After making that change, I tried a search on "natus 10 may 1711 regimen agressus 17 may 1735 denatus", and it does not appear that my results are any different than what I got yesterday (assuming I recall that correctly).