Florino D'agento ( Silver Florin) 1189-1252

thanks for that. I was trying to work out what the splodge after Florentia is... soon as you said star it was obvious. Obviously, the dealer transposed some numbers. It would be great if someone else can confirm

Edit: Heritage is selling one at that moment. Heritage also lists the coin as Biaggi 783. So My guess is coin archives has the catalogue number numerals transposed. Interestingly the date range is slightly different, in the Heritage listing.

https://www.sixbid.com/browse.html?...&lot=4850490

@austrokiwi, I was able to turn up a couple of examples in CoinArchives by searching under "Firenze fiorino" rather than "Florence fiorino" (seems their algorithms do not pick up the actual Italian names of the city states?).
You will see the example that went unsold at Spink (date range attributed was circa 1250-60 within the broader range 1182-1532), and an example that sold at Ranieri in November with only the broad date range 1189-1532.
This latter example has a dot after the A.

When I get a chance, I will try to go into CNI online and see if I can find anything.

tdziemia thanks for that. I think the date range is estimated from the periods of gvt type. I am already assuming the coin was struck after 1194. The reason for that assumption is: the Venitian Grosso was the model for this type of coin. so any florentine issue would have to be after the earliest striking date of the Grosso. Genoese numismatists claim that Genoa produced a Grosso before the Venetians. However, the early Genoan Grosso was only worth 4 denari, while the Venetian( and Florentine) were worth 24-26 Denari

thanks, that's great. I think I will download CNI to my Kindle. one minor comparison I conducted was to look at this coin with the 1335 Gold Florin I recently purchased. I saw what I expected which may be an error of logic( but I don't think it is). As I am also cognizant of the minting technology, I have thought that the gold ducat, gold florin and genovino could be understood as off-metal strikes of the Grosso. When you compare these coins to the silver Grosso you find they are of the same dimensions. Gold, particularly of the purity used at this time, is easier to strike than silver. It seems to me it was an easy step just to use the same techniques to produce the gold coins. this Silver Florin is exactly the same dimensions as the gold florin. The only difference is the gold coin is of slightly thicker fabric, other than that the diameter is exactly the same. As I understand the development of Genovino and Gold florin were produced to provide a denomination of the same value as the money of account; the lira. For the mint, it would have been a simple matter just to produce slightly thicker plate, while keeping everything else the same as the silver Grosso they were already producing. Certainly, this silver coin matches up with the gold Florin nicely when compared in hand. Although the 1335 gold coin was struck much later it was no different in size and weight to the first of the type struck in 1252. I know the Venetian Tron is regarded as the first Lire, I would only preface that with "silver".

Edited to correct some errors:
The later silver Florins are named after the fiorino d'Argento. I am still doing some digging so some of this is subject to change. The original silver florin was effectively a 2 shilling piece ( 1/10 Gold florin) a schilling being 12 pennies. The florins of Germany were worth 100 kreutzers and in the Netherlands, a silver florin was 28 Stuivers.. in both cases, these amounts were still equivalent to 2 shillings. However, the amount of silver within the coins increased over time( as silver devalued with respect to gold). In 1849 the Brits introduced a florin. It also was 2 shillings and was 1/10 of a pound. That was not a significant change in the terminology but was one of the actual value and pound was worth double what it had been( 2 dollars = pound). Now 5 brit florins were equivalent to a half pound represented by a half-sovereign, a coin very close in weight to the original gold florin.



Please someone else jump in and make corrections if necessary

Edit: now tracking the gold florin is also interesting. In Germany, it was called a gulden penning ( or Pfennig) that became shortened to Gulden. what fascinates me is the USA dollar was, when it was instituted, a coin equivalent to a gold florin/ ducat/ gulden/Escudo.