How Far Back Can We Go? Seventh Edition! Ended At 1380 Waiting On 1379

Well, after 95 years (well, days) I finally get to contribute something . 1700 IA (Graz) Austrian Empire 3 kreuzer, Leopold I.

Sorry but I'm lowering the tone with my 1699 British halfpenny - date in legend type!

The "rough" ones need love, too!

http://goccf.com/t/358663&whichpage=5#3882637

Both of these are 1699 K-B Duarius (3 Denar=2 Duarius) under King Leopold I;Huszar 1499,Unger 1105. The first one is without the pearl circle around the coat of arms and the second with.

I thought I've had this coin long enough to post it in the 3rd edition. But apparently not - or at least not with pics.
(Bigger surprise: I didn't remember to post it in the 4th edition either. I've definitely had the pics by then.)



Tsardom of Russia, Peter I (the Great)
AR kopek, (7)208 AM = 1699/1700 AD
10x7 mm, ~0.3 grams; I probably took a more precise weight but forgot
[if I ever figured out its KG variety number I don't remember it]


This is the coin type that (AFAICT) features the highest numeric date ever represented on a coin: in the local calendar of the time, this coin was issued in the year 7208.
The date is given, in the Russian version of the Greek alphabetical numerals, by the letters CH, which correspond to 200 and 8 respectively. The 7 thousands were omitted - a common practice at the time.
(Yes, this technically means that the date is incomplete, and puts a cloud over its status as the largest. AFAICT, as I write this, the largest complete date represented on a coin is 5783, on this Israeli NCLT piece. I'm also excluding date mistakes, some of which had gone into five digits.)

The calendar was officially changed on 1 January 1700 AD, so I'm assigning this coin to 1699 even though the year 7208 AM nominally ended on 1 September 1700 (i.e. was mostly in 1700).
IIRC sources differ on whether the minting of this type had in fact continued into the newly renumbered year (and if so, for how long).

I've made an extensive write-up on my interpretation of the minting of this coin in its Fifth Edition entry.
(I thought that write-up was actually posted in another thread - and indeed it originally was, but the original version contained some very unfortunate errors that were fixed in this version.)


...As usual for my pics from this period of my CCF participation, I apologize for the rotated photos; they were the right way up when uploaded, but a glitch in CCF's treatment of photo orientation added a 90 degree rotation (many years after upload) to all phone pics I uploaded to CCF for several months in 2016-17.

I have another coin from 1699 (which AFAIK hadn't been posted in a HFBCWG thread before, though I've owned it even longer than this one), and I hope I'll be able to post it later today.

Here's my other 1699 coin - no asterisk on its date this time!

I've had it since 2012 (and recall having paid 1200 rubles for it, a huge sum at the time - around $40), but for some reason hadn't taken any photos until 2021...



Kingdom of England, William III (sole reign)
4 pence ("Maundy" type), 1699
KM# 495, Numista 27954

AFAIK it's not actually possible to tell whether this coin was originally a Maundy issue, as at the time Maundy coinage was made to the same specifications and designs as normal circulating coinage of the same denominations.

(Or, perhaps, in the case of this fourpence, normal circulating coinage of the same denominations was made to the same specifications and designs as the Maundy issues; it is very much a Maundy coinage design, very similar to those of decades and centuries before and after.)


IIRC there's been some debate as to whether the law that officially declared Maundy coinage to be legal tender at its value in new pence had applied to the entire series of similar designs, or only to those dated after the 1810s reform; it is also unclear whether it had only applied specifically to coins intended as Maundy coinage, or to all coins with the same specifications and designs.
(Circulating threepence were made to the same design as Maundy coins until the reign of George V, well into the 20th century.)

If both of these questions are interpreted expansively, this would be the oldest coin in my collection that is technically still legal tender, beating the second oldest (a US cent from 1801) by just over a century.