[Game] World Coins Time Machine… Counting Backward by Year! (Plus Prize Coin)

I see the dated coins of Elizabeth I and Edward VI in my Spink Catalog now. I have a Elizabeth sixth issue shilling and an Edward sixpence, neither have the date.

Thanks for the great response.

 

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1679 Scottish bawbee.

I`m out now, no more to show.

 

I am still on for a bit yet. Here is my 1678 offer - another threepence:

 

1678 -- Scotland, bawbee:

 

Hope I am not jumping the gun here, long time since I have posted anything on this thread. 1678 six stuiver from West Frisiae, called a "Scheepjesschelling" which I assume means "Ships Shilling".

 

That is a stunning coin Ed!
Here is my offering for 1678:

 

I guess its a good time to go to the"Year of Our Lord' 1677

Got this from Numizmatika Pannonia Terra Auction 34

FDC 1677 K-B Kremintz Mint/ Hungary
Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I 1657-1705

 

I have something a bit better for 1677 - a Crown:

 

1677 -- Salzburg, 1 kreuzer:

 

For 1676 I have a rather nice Half Crown. After 1670 my date run becomes fragmented, so I hope there are others in the wings to keep things going!

 

1676 -- Brunswick, 4 pfennig:

 

France.
4 sols 1675.

 

For 1675 I have a sixpence - these are extraordinarily hard to get these days:

 

Great Britain Farthing 1675. Poor and very worn example but the variety with a dot after Carolus

 

Here’s a massive content dump. I was fascinated about what I recently discovered about this coin. I was documenting it for myself, and I offer it here for you too.

1675 British halfcrown, Charles II, S-3367

As I photographed this coin recently, I was surprised to find evidence that its raised edge legend was imprinted as the coin was struck. I thought the edge legend would be applied to the planchet or the stamped coin by a machine separate from the press, a machine similar to the Castaing machine. But a massive edge to edge die crack on this coin provides the evidence that the edge legend was applied during the strike. More on this later.



Die Cracks



To get some idea about the difficulty imprinting the edge legends, consider that the milling press could stamp out coins at 30 per minute. The poor sole at the press needed to remove the previous coin and place the next planchet every 2 seconds. (1) There was no time to be fussing with coins in collars. So how did they accomplish the edge lettering?


Peter Blondeau, a former engineer from the Paris Mint, was given a grant by the Royal Mint to provide the equipment for the milled coinage of Charles II, the first milled coinage to achieve continued circulation in England. Blondeau had invented a method for applying the lettering to the edge of a milled coin, and the Royal Mint wanted this. Blondeau was secretive about his method for edge lettering, and numismatists aren’t sure how the raise edge characters were implemented. His machinery is inferred from coins, surviving dies and the like.

Before Charles II’s milled coinage, Blondeau minted some patterns and milled coinage of Oliver Cromwell from 1651 to 1656. But the traditional (hammered) moneyers intrigued against him, and after Cromwell died, Blondeau returned to France. Blondeau’s machinery was mothballed, and coin hammering won the day. Later Blondeau would be summoned by the Royal Mint (about 1661), which was intent on applying edge lettering as a clipping countermeasure on the Charles II milled coinage.

A paper by Peter Gaspar, Simon’s Cromwell Crown Dies in the Royal Mint Museum and Blondeau’s Method for the Production of Lettered Edges, (2) discusses two competing proposals about the method of Blondeau’s edge lettering on the Cromwell coinage.

Gaspar champions his proposal that the lettering was applied by a Castaing like machine which rolled the letters onto the edge of the planchet, and the planchets were later struck without a collar.

Gaspar also discusses the competing method at length. In this method, the lettered edge would have been imprinted during the strike. I believe that on my coin, the edge lettering was applied during the strike too. But mine is a coin of 1675, and does not imply that Gaspar was incorrect regarding his study of the earlier coinage. Blondeau’s method of edge lettering could have changed over time.

Gasper’s paper describes the competing method proposed by William J. Hocking as follows:
The use of a stencil-like steel strip held in a collar to apply edge lettering was believed by Hocking to constitute the 'new invention, not yet practised in any state in the world', that Blondeau himself claimed. The thin strip of steel, according to Hocking, carried the inscription with which the edge of the coin was to be marked as a series of perforations shaped as letters. The steel strip (or several overlapping strips) was placed within a smooth collar, and the blank to be coined was placed within the steel strip. When the blank was struck with the dies it would expand through the perforations of the inscribed band and be contained by the smooth collar. The edge would thus be marked with raised lettering whose relief corresponds to the thickness of the inscribed band. The coin and band together would finally be knocked out of the smooth collar, and the band would spring free leaving the finished coin.

It seems that coins being struck every 2 seconds, would require that the steel strip, smooth collar and planchet be placed and removed from the press as an assembly. Gasper’s paper doesn’t say if the collar was free or attached to the press.

So ... it’s not clear to me how the raised edge could have been stamped on my coin in 1675. But I believe my coin clearly shows that the edge lettering was stamped at the press by the force of the die … a separate machine to apply the edge lettering was not used on my coin.

The evidence that the raised edge legend was imprinted on the coin press for this 1675 coin follows – The state of the edge lettering on this coin indicates that the lettering was applied during the strike. This is evident because the condition of the edge lettering matches the condition of the strike on the faces. The left coin faces and edge lettering are strong, and the right faces and edges are degraded. This shows that the die crack affected the edge lettering, and therefore the edge lettering must have been applied in the strike. If a separate machine was used to apply the edge legend, the edge legend would not be so severely affected by the cracked die.



1) http://www.royalmintmuseum.org.uk/h...n-the-past/the-early-modern-period/index.html

(2) THE BRITISH NUMISMATIC JOURNAL 1976 (vol 45) pg 55, The British Numismatic Society https://www.britnumsoc.org/publications/Digital BNJ/pdfs/1976_BNJ_46_9.pdf
This document was listed in the bibliography of Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castaing_machine

 

I forgot that I now have scanned some bronze for 1675 - a farthing and a halfpenny:

 

Jimski, great writeup!

Here is a
AV 4 Dukaten 1675 Brieg Mint
Georg IV Wilhelm Herzog zu Silesia-Lignitz-Brieg

 

1675 -- Silesia / Liegnitz-Brieg, 3 kreuzer:

 

I guess we move on to 1674. I have a threepence and a farthing for you: