Recently I was fortunate to acquire a 1814 15 soldi struck at Milan during the Napoleonic period for my typeset. Not only is this an odd denomination at 75 centesimi but the reported mintage is only 371! An interesting aspect of my example is that the second 1 appears to be struck over a 0. Compared to the French issues the reuse of the dies by the Italian mints seems to have been very common and overdates abound for all of the denominations yet do not appear to be reported for the 15 soldi in the reference books I have (Gigante 174; Montenegro 268; Pagani P51, CNI Volume V C119, Gadoury IT22, Krause C#7). A quick search of the images in the auction archives suggests that this overdate is not unusual although it does not appear to be mentioned in the actual listing, so do all the coins have this overdate? Would several dies really have been needed for such a small production run? Despite the low mintage compared to the other issues – 1808M (37,771) and 1809M (14,457) – the 1814M not only seems to be more available but the quality of the coins is also much higher than the other two dates. This situation is also reflected in the graded populations: 1808M; NGC has 2 coins, one in MS63 and one in Fine whereas PCGS reports three coins, MS63, MS60 and VF. There are no graded examples of the much rarer 1809M at either service. 1814M; NGC has 6 coins all in mint state (MS62 to M65 including prooflike examples) and PCGS has just two at MS64 and MS62. The low mintage coupled with the quality of the existing coins suggests to me that the 1814M issue may be a hoard coin and if anyone is able to shed some light on this that would be much appreciated!
Nice coin. I have a 2015 issue of Gigante and on page 221 they have a footnote concerning the 1814M 15 centesimi coins. It talks about the reported 371 minted but also about the Austrians minting this coin and that this coin shows up frequently in auctions. My Italian reading comprehension is not the best and I might have read it wrong. By the way where can you purchase the Pagani coin books
My later issue of Gigante also have this comment, I do not read Italian either but it does suggest that it is more common than the mintage implies. Maybe the issue never entered circulation, hence my thoughts that it may be a hoard coin. Given everything that was going on in Napoleon's empire at the time it would be nice to know exactly when the 1814 issues were struck. The Pagani reference seems to appear quite regularly at auction - there was one available at the Kunker sale yesterday, lot 683.
Gigante's comment about the Austrian's also minting these coins seems to imply that this issue was re-struck.
