I have and have had the opportunity to buy unidentified tokens, and I thought it might be a neat topic of conversation. For me, part of the hobby is the history of a piece, and starting with something unknown is an interesting prospect for me. Does anyone else seek out unidentified pieces in the hopes of tracking down the origin and identifying it yourself?
Theoretically, yes. It depends on the price and whether the design has any appeal. I haven't come across any yet, unfortunately.
I collect a lot of medals from France and Belgium, but some of them were produced by private mints with very little information about them. I found that the same was true for jetons. So, I ended up acquiring Mitchiner's, Jetons, Medalets and Tokens - The Low Countries and France as well as Forrer's, Biographical Dictionary of Medallists to help fill in some of the gaps. The Mitchiner reference is really helpful because it provides mintages, metal composition, size and weight whenever possible as well as explanations for the legends. Chris
The Forrer reference is an 8-volume compendium with 5,200+ pages listing medallists dating from 500 B.C. - 1900 A.D. For example, Charles Barber is listed, but James Earle Fraser is not. Chris
Yes, I would buy unidentified/unknown/poorly understood coins. This silver coin is an unknown monetary unit from an unknown 7th century Kingdom located in either the Sindh or Multan province of modern Pakistan, part of ancient India. Little is known about the political environment of the area during this time, as the Muslim conquests destroyed it all thoroughly, so whatever kingdom made these coins is long gone and little if anything is known about them, and these coins are still not well known or understood. They are fairly mysterious. Maybe one day they will have been better researched, understood, and properly attributed, but that day has not yet arrived.
I not only would buy an unidentified piece, I have done so on more than 1 occasion. This coin for example - - when I found it listed in an auction, could not be identified. There were no previous auction records, it was not listed in any book anywhere, not listed or mentioned in any article old or new - it was completely unknown. And then, years later, when I later found a second example - - I bought that one too.
I knew what was when I first saw it, ducats were my specialty after all, an off-metal strike of this coin - http://www.coinshome.net/en/coin_definition-1_Ducat-Gold-Salzburg-PoUKbzbicCkAAAFMb3gVZvk9.htm In later years research proved that the mint had made a few test strikes of this coin in silver, pewter, and white metal. Both of mine were silver and eventually ended up (after I sold them) in NGC slabs. Along with a few others that were eventually discovered once I had made the coins known.
Thanks, saved me some time as I was going to try to find it. What I do with a piece like this (now that we are in the Internet era) is to type out the legend, country, date, etc if they can be seen. This does not work with Arabic coins. I've suggested to NGC that they form a data base where anyone can scan a photo of a coin, send it in, and a computer would match it up and ID it. They could even charge for the service. Anyway, I'll bet that idea will be a reality one day someplace. And it will work for all foreign coins including ancients made with any style of letters including Cyrillic and Indic.
Would I, Yes. Have I, Yes. Some tokens, not all but some can take you into the lives and history of people all around the world. Little things, little stories, little history into a world or time right now only in peoples memories. My Favorite one. Welcome to the lives of a small little town in 1963. http://m.kpcnews.com/features/kv150/article_d0158282-8f9b-592c-857c-52bdc315ed0b.html?mode=jqm Doing more research on it. This led me to a Town build on old wooden refrigerators. With some of the homes and stories involved. The town was built around old wood refrigerators, back before there was electric ones. Back in the day you had to put hunks of ice on top. https://www.google.com/search?q=mcc..._AUICCgD&dpr=1#tbm=isch&q=mccray+refrigerator With some historic homes and other things. http://www.oldhousedreams.com/2015/02/18/1928-colonial-revival-kendallville-in/ http://www.wsj.com/articles/mansion-built-for-a-refrigerator-magnate-asking-449-900-1424362338 This is why i like Ancients too. You never know where a coin or in this case a token will take you.
Well, it would be a lot easier to understand if you had any idea of how many hours I used to spend searching for coins every, single day, on top of all of the dealers I also had searching for coins for me. And that's not counting all of the friends and members from numerous coin forums who would also notify me when they ran across a coin they thought I might be interested in. You see, all of the advice and ideas that for years I have been giving others on how to maximize their search efforts - I used to do them all myself. That's how I know their value and they work
