Wow ducats are truly magnificent coins. Well here is my first one. An early Christmas present to myself.
From what I understand, dangolf, this is as close as Doug gets to hitting the "Like" button. Here's a link to the book he edited on the ducat. http://goldducats.com/product/dariusz-f-jasek-gold-ducats-of-the-netherlands-vol-1/
For those who might wish to do so, go up to the Search box at the top of this page and click in it. Type in the word - ducat. Then underneath where it says - Posted by member - type in GDJMSP and then click on the Search button at the bottom. This will bring up several pages of links to to old threads about ducats with many pictures. If you like ducats, you should enjoy it
Lovely coin Dangolf. I hope you don't mind me sharing mine with you. We can work towards putting a date set together
Grazie; just think, other than Ducats it is simply not feasible to put together a 16th century date gold set of any other coin type. At least not for the common layman anyway. That of course is said without taking into account the innate beauty of the coins themselves. As I'm sure you'll agree you never tire of looking at your 1596 ducat. I know my 1598 example has become one of my favorite coins
Yea it's crazy how relatively affordable they are. Imagine trying to do the same with early American gold. This one is definitely up there in the top 5 coins in my collection at the moment. My only complaint is that ducats are so thin. I expected the metal to be a tad thicker.
But it can't be. Netherlands ducats are made of nearly pure gold - 98.6% pure. And since the designated weight of the coin 3.5 grams, and the diameter 21 mm, the thickness of the coin has to be what it is. Yeah it could be made thicker, but then it would have to be smaller. They are the size of a nickel as they are, make them thicker and they would be smaller than a dime.
It should be noted though the ducats that aren't hammered(beginning in the early 18th century I believe) have a smaller diameter than their hammered counterparts and subsequently are a bit thicker