Has anyone looked at the coins of pre-Revolution France,especially the silver & found a dot under the 3rd letter of the King's name? Well,this dot indicates that the coin is a 2nd Semester issue.Some 2nd Semester-issued coins were issued posthumously.
Strangely enough I mentioned that exact same thing just a few hours ago in relation to Sylvesters thread concerning his new (french) additions.
Hello Ian,have you ever looked at your French coins (if you have any) & checked for the dot under the 3rd letter?
Yes indeed. I have a couple of examples from different mints, mainly (but not exclusively) from the period 1790-93. I believe it was the 2nd semestre coinage for 1793 that was issued posthumously (ie those with the `Genie de France' reverse)
Ian,I thought that all the 1793's were issued posthumously,given the fact that the French monarchy was overthrown in 1792.I have 2 of the 1793 brass 12 Deniers.
The constitutional monarchy continued up to Louis XVI demise on 21st January 1793. Much of the coinage intended for 1793 had already been coined and distributed by then (as far as i'm led to believe although I would be happy to be shown otherwise). The Ecu of Six Livres of 1793 with the Genie de France *obverse* was struck after Louis' death and rather obviously has no mention of royalty on it. The Ecu of Six Livres of 1793 with Louis XVI bust obverse and Genie reverse however were apparently struck when he was still alive. If you don't know the particular coins i'm talking about I can scan the ones I have and show.
Brass 1792 12 Deniers Error Coin Greetings. Ian, you mentioned that the 1793 coins as being struck in brass. Do these have a date of 1793 or still 1792 but were made in 1793? Reason I ask is that I'm an Error Coin Collector and am now the proud owner of a double struck 1792 12 Deniers that is struck in brass. All the examples from the internet that I can find are all copper for this date. I'd greatly appreciate any info you can provide on this coin. All The Best, Scott
Foesaken,I can answer your question.There were brass coins struck in both 1792 & 1793 bearing these dates.I have seen a lot of brass coins dated 1792,but not surprisingly,very few dated 1793.Any error coin from this period is of interest.I think that there would be a premium on such pieces,but it really depends on what the coin is,plus the grade has to be taken into account.
Doubling really has very little if any premium for coins prior to the 20th century. It was actually quite common and it's often harder to find coins without doubling or some other error.
GDJMSP,that is true to a certain extent.Have you had a look at the coin in Foesaken's pictures? I think that is a coin variety that would command a premium above the normal coin.
To some collectors it probably would - but it would depend entirely on the collector. Granted - such an extreme double strike ( it's not doubling as most know it today ) is unusual. But in most cases it is considered less desirable than a normally struck coin. But as I said - it depends on the collector buying the coin.
Hi Scott, Hey mate, I never once mentioned brass. I'll tell you what though, by the time they got to the `Constitutional Monarchy' period, some mints were using melted down scrap metals to make many of the 3 + 6 + 12 denier coins and the 2 sols from. Some mints only used copper (I think) while some apparently didn't use copper at all (AFAIK). The french have always been great coinage `recyclers' . my references speak of the coins as being made from either `cuivre' (copper) or `metal de cloche' (bell metal). The reality is that there is some great variance in the consistency of the metal mix used to make these coins. Brass is normally referred to as `cuivre jaune' ( yellow copper), and although brass may have ended up in the `mix' the coins weren't deliberately made as a `brass'. The variation in colour can be quite dramatic though when you see a few coins from different mints side by side. I've got them ranging from nice brown / red copper, through an ill looking taupe colour, to full rich yellow brass. Other than that the 15 sols, 30 sols, 3 livres and six livres were silver. The 24 livres were gold. As to `errors'. The whole concept of `quality control' vanished along with the heads of many of the intelligentsia of the time. Louis XVI was not the first to lose his head, and the designer of Le genie de France on the reverse of this coinage was also due to have his removed. However, he managed to escape from the Bastille and legend has it that he bribed the guards using an essaie of the gold 24 livres he had managed to secrete somewhere in his clothing. The story of his miraculous escape has in turn given rise to these coins being often referred to as `lucky Angels'. If the story is true then it certainly was a lucky Angel for him. The base metal coinage commonly has missing stops, the cedilla's on the c's are missing, many aren't fully struck up, flans are pretty rough etc etc etc. Generally a real hotch potch of possible errors are to be found including blundered legends, all of which are collectable but the majority of the common errors don't command any premium as they tend to be the `norm'. Your coin however is rather dramatic as both a double strike and an off centre one at that. I'm sure that it would fetch a premium with some french collectors but nowhere near the kind of money that US error coins tend to fetch. You can see that yours is from Paris mint (top of the letter`A' just under the bust). It was also the second issue of 1792. Beside the date on the reverse is the number of the year of the revolution. For 1792 the number was either 3 or 4 (total mintage for both for Paris was 7,828,080). The last coinage struck of that type would be 1793. 5. De La Lib (5th year of liberation). Hope some of the foregoing helps or otherwise rings a bell for you ;-) Ian
I'd go with that. Finding a perfect example is a bit more difficult than finding one with an error, although Scott's one is a bit more of an obvious error strike than most that survive. France does have it's error collectors but not on the same scale as in the US and as such the money chasing after such errors (`demand') is limited.
