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

I can tackle this question, at least to the extent that I am using it in these OFEY threads. To me, this means that the coin is known to have been minted in that year. In some cases, that means that the monarch or other persons named on the coin only ruled for a single year while in other cases it means that there is still extant legislation or mint records showing a specific year for minting that type or denomination at that facility. Several months ago (maybe years now), we had a really good conversation on CCF about the mostly French term "emissions" and what this means for dating coins. I'm sure @j1m, @tdz, @era, or one of the others that frequent this thread can find that discussion.

Today's coin is a good example of the term "datable". This Gold Gulden is datable to 1439 AD. It is attributed as Freidberg 797 and Noss 362. One downside is the still partly visible evidence of a prior mounting. Again, my apologies for the poor coloration of the pictures.

Awesome thx for finding that!

Almost responded there by accident - posting here instead...

Probably...

I suspect that for most of the 15th century (and even more so the 14th) it's probably usually easiest (and almost certainly usually cheaper) to find an Islamic dated coin - it's just that they're harder to ID, and (partly as a consequence) comparatively few people collect those, so it might be tricky to get a hold of a coin with the exact right date. (And the field is large enough that you can't just cherrypick very easily.)
Past the early 14th century we'd be entering the areas where Islamic dates are usually written out in words (though, as we've already seen in both the 7th and 6th editions, there are some sporadic examples of such even in the 15th century), which makes identification and attribution even harder (can't just look out for the numerals). But by that point European options dry up so much that there's almost no competition anyway.

I highly suspect (and might even have mentioned) that if I was even slightly more comfortable with buying coins online (from places like MA Shops) I'd probably already have had most of the 15th century represented by Islamic coins in my OFEY collection. If I was any better at attribution (and/or had a few more months to go around with my increased budgets before having to move away in 2022) I could probably have done the same for the 14th century (with its strong Golden Horde representation) even with just local coin stores.
Some day I hope to return back to Moscow and (re)start collecting ancient and medieval coins again. It's nominally legal in Israel, but the supply is tiny (and mostly goes to tourists), and the prices are correspondingly high (and I hadn't been able to establish anything regarding the legality of buying coins from abroad).

For the AH dated coins (Arabic text) the normal numerals are fairly easy to distinguish from the flowing text lines. However, depending on the region and time-frame, the numerals can vary in shape and even morph into the shape of other previous numbers (0, 4, 5, 6, 7). Wikipedia has an informative read on the development of the Hindu - Arabic number system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu...meral_system and also there was a discussion on this page http://goccf.com/t/428286&whichpage=343 regarding the changing of number shapes over time. I recall on that page that you may have sparked a good discussion about the changing shapes of both Western and Eastern numerals by querying the different shape of the number 4.

More to the point that you make though, perhaps the 'hidden' numbers on the Arabic style coins should be highlighted more often. I know I often put a coin up, assuming that everyone can see what I see.
Additionally, sometimes there is only part of a date visible, but the coin is dateable through other means, for example in my latest posted coin in the Sixth Edition, a 1389 CE (AH 791) Timurid AR Miri, only the top section of the numeral 1 is visible, with the 7 and 9 being off flan. This coin is dateable as the Chaghatayid "successor" Mahmud started his 'reign' in 790 and died in 800, which leaves 791 as the logical date. There were other type coins which cited Mahmud posthumously, or included his successor Muhammad subsequent to 800, but not this type of 'miri'.

Nice examples!

Thx!

For whatever reason, it seems as though 1437 is a year with generally more dated coins available. Here are two: another Groschen from Cologne (Levinson I-34) and a Gold Gulden from Palatinate (Levinson I-39):

Stunning!