As some of you know, an area of particular interest for me is early dated or datable coins. To that end, several years ago I started a thread to follow Levinson's "The Early Dated Coins of Europe 1234-1500":
http://goccf.com/t/269713These types of coins also turn up toward the end of our "How Far Can We Go" series of threads, although the current edition is still in the early 20th century:
http://goccf.com/t/428286Particular to the reason for this thread, though, the Austrian Duchy of Wiener-Neustadt minted similar Kreutzers for the five years from 1456 to 1460 AD, inclusive. The design includes four small shields arranged to form a cross on the obv, along with some variation of FRIDERIC RO IMPERA. The reverse contains the Holy Roman Empire ruler's sigil/monogram (AEIOV--more on that here:
http://goccf.com/t/260883) plus ANNO:DOMINI and a four-digit date, with archaic typeforms on the various numbers and full size annulets separating each digit. Unfortunately, the flans are often split with flat spots in the design, perhaps due to low quality silver content. With my Sigma Metalytics Precious Metal Verifier, I feel pretty sure that the silver content is below 80% on these coins.
I recently picked up what was listed as a 1460-dated Kreutzer of Wiener-Neustadt. This date is quite rare, with only an estimated 4-6 available in private hands, and would join its brothers in mine collection dated 1458 and 1459 AD. After my analysis of remnant date, however, I feel that this new coin is actually also dated 1459 AD. These coins, which can be attributed as Levinson IV-7 are shown below. The predicate coin is 0.7 g and 20 mm in diameter, while the new coin is 0.7 g and 16-18 mm in diameter. Perhaps the flan of the new coin was clipped sometime in the past several hundred years to harvest a little silver or perhaps this flan was a just a little thicker and smaller in diameter--hard to know for sure.
Predicate coin:
The last digit of the date (nine) is most visible on this coin and is located at about 11:30 on the rev. The number five (which at this time looked much like a modern number seven) spans both sides of a massive flan split. I think that neither of the first two digits are legible, but there is enough here to convince me that the date is 1459.
New coin:
The first digit of the date is clearly visible at about 8 o'clock on the rev and looks a bit like a toffee in a plastic wrapper. With each subsequent digit, less and less is visible though. The bottom half of the second digit is mostly visible at 9 o'clock. Recall that at this time, the typeform for the number four looked a bit like a the modern cursive lowercase "l". Look at 10 o'clock, the bottom of the third digit to me looks mostly like a modern number 7 (which again would make it actually a 5). I simply can't see how that would be a number six instead. Only a whisper of the final digit is visible, and of the four possibilities, a number nine seems most likely to me.
I'm interested in your thoughts on my analysis as I regard it as tentative. Thx.
Posted 11/21/2022 7:23 pm
