Dear all, I usually buy from dealers and in person (never made a purchase online). Covid kind of put a damper on my coinpurchases... today I went out in Berlin and bought my first 5 coins of 2020. Two of them, the dealer did not know for sure what they were, which made them attainable, affordable and... mysterious. One I suspect is from sometime in the (late?) middle ages, european. The other, is I suspect some kind of arabic or sub-continent. Can't be 100% sure though. Do you have any ideas? european one is 19 mm at its largest across. oriental-looking one is 20-21 mm across at its largest. Any help is welcome. Cheers, and stay safe! Alex
The bottom one looks like it has a shield on the left picture (obverse?). Shields and heraldry are usually not on Arabic coins.... but I have no idea what it actually is.
The first one is a William I or II PAXS penny c.1086. The type looks as below. However, I'm a bit concerned at the detail, which looks a bit 'thick' and what looks to be a join on the edge at 4-5 o'clock. I'm yet to be convinced that it isn't a copy. What is the weight? Those I have here are in the range 1.41g - 1.45g. If it was very cheap, then it should also be suspect.
Thank you! I don't have a fine enough scale... The joint edge effect i noticed as well, albeit only on that side of the coin. All pics below are of the penny. The two coins were both out of a box that in German is called a "Grabbelkiste" - a box of assorted coins, that are either worthless, or in very bad shape. There were a couple of these boxes - one for 20th century coins (1euro each), one with less valuable 19th century coins (variable price) and one small box with ancient and medieval coins in very bad shape that were impossible or almost impossible to identify (poor roman late bronzes, small sicilian bronze denars, etc) for 5 euros each. They both came out of that box. They were the two best coins in the box...
alright, cheers! Hopefully somebody will be able to provide some hints on the other one - I don't even know how to start searching with that one.