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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;chrisild, post: 301924, member: 39&quot;]That 20 fr coin is Au900 gold, Ø 21 mm. The weight should, according to my catalog, be 6.4516 g. The L is short for lingot (bar); those coins are dated 1935 but were minted in 1946. (After the 1936 devaluation of the franc they lost their function as means of payment.)</p><p><br /></p><p>The history of the woman depicted on the coins (&quot;Vreneli&quot;) is quite interesting. The artist Fritz Landry first designed a younger woman&#039;s head, but the jury decided in 1895 that she was not old enough. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /> He was asked to redo the design and make her more mature and motherly. The result is almost what we see on this 1935 piece, except that the first few pieces minted in 1897 were still criticized by some Swiss as being too frivolous to be an allegoric representation of the country. Finally the forehead curl was removed ...</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://www.swissmint.ch/upload/_pdf/dokumentationen/d/VRENELI.pdf" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.swissmint.ch/upload/_pdf/dokumentationen/d/VRENELI.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.swissmint.ch/upload/_pdf/dokumentationen/d/VRENELI.pdf</a> (in German)</p><p>p.3 top left: the first design -- top right: the &quot;improved&quot; design -- bottom right: the &quot;frivolous&quot; curl that can be found on the twelve first 1897 pieces</p><p><br /></p><p>Christian[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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