In every catalog I've seen, not just Krause but Hungarian catalogs as well, the Hungarian 5 Korona (KM-488) is listed as one type 1900-1909, however, it strikes me that there are actually two types within this range and that it's been seemingly overlooked for years. First, while this type was struck from 1900-1909, to better understand what I'm talking about, it's important to note that the mintage actually looks like this: 1900 3,840,000 1901 N/A 1902 N/A 1903 N/A 1904 N/A 1905 N/A 1906 1,263 1907 500,221 1908 1,742,452 1909 1,298,970 So, the first type was struck in 1900 and 1906 and uses the bust on the left below. The second type was struck from 1907-1909 and uses the bust on the right below. Look at the shape of the back of the head. The bust of 1900 has a smooth rounded head shape with a higher hair line, whereas the bust of 1907 has a dip in the head shape and a lower hair line. The shape of the neck under the chin and the Adam's apple is also quite different between them, as is the beard shape, brow, cheek, wrinkles about the face and neck, and the position of the ear relative to the laurel (the 1900 type has the laurel above the ear, the 1907 type has the laurel leaf covering part of the ear). All in all, aside from both being busts of Franz Joseph, they were engraved nearly a decade apart and depict Franz Joseph at age 70 (or slightly younger) and at age 77, respectively. Some background - this is commonly done with Franz Joseph coinage. His busts on coinage were redone at least every 10 years throughout his reign either on the decade or during a year with a significant political or commemorative event. Whenever the bust was updated for a denomination it's been identified as a new type, but not here. So, what's going on with this issue? If you look at the Austrian types, there are 4 5 corona types identified between 1900-1909: KM-2807 Issued in 1900 and 1907 KM-2809 1908 Commemorative (60 years of reign) KM-2813 1909 (Large Head) KM-2814 1909 (Small Head - Obverse of the 1908 commemorative) For Hungary it looks like this: KM-488 Issued in 1900 and 1906-1909 KM-489 1907 Commemorative (40 years of reign) What I'm saying here is that the KM-488 that resumed in 1907 is actually a different type with a newly created bust of an older Franz Joseph, and the types line up a lot better with what you see going on with the Austrian types. After all, the types they issued were coordinated under the same mint director: KM-488 Issued in 1900 and 1906 KM-489 1907 Commemorative (40 years of reign) (New Type) Issued in 1907-1909 For comparison, take a look at the bust on my proposed 1907-09 type and compare it to the bust of 1907 on the KM-489 one-year commemorative. It's plain to see that these two busts match in appearance extremely closely with each other. The hairline, beard style, and shape of the features match, and both depict Franz Joseph at the same age (77). On another note, the KM-488 was officially restruck in the 1960s. They restruck 1900, 1907, and 1909, however, they used the same obverse die for all 3 restrikes (the bust of 1900). The implication of adding a new type the way I propose doing means that the restrikes of 1907 and 1909 produced by Artex are actually mules as they used an obverse die for the earlier type that was never in use past 1906. Here is the obverse of the 1909 restrike, which clearly uses the bust of 1900.
As you can watch him age from the late 1840s through 1916 on the coinage, some of the bust differences are very subtle. One of my favorite sets is my date set of Austro-Hungarian corona/korona, and the 1900 bust on the 5K looks a lot like the 1892-1906 1 Korona bust as well, while the 1907 5K bust looks a lot like the 1912-1916 1 Korona bust. Not only that, but both earlier types ended in 1906, which is part of what clued me in to this.
I forgot to also mention the differences in dentils, since that is also somewhat compelling. The type of 1900 & 1906 has smaller, denser packed dentils - 167 dentils on the obverse. The type of 1907-1909 has larger dentils and there are 10 fewer - 157 dentils on the obverse. I've been working on a new English catalog for Hungarian coins from this period over the last couple years. The working title is The Coinage of Hungary 1848-1948, The Centenary of the War of Independence. I've incorporated this new type I've discovered into the catalog, along with some other organizational adjustments and trial/pattern discoveries I've made for the coinage of this period.
Great research and write-up. A modified effigy is most certainly a new type, as can be seen with numerous examples of other coins.
Amazing research and explanation. I suggest you publish this in one of our numismatic rags of record. May I suggest that you float this one past COINage Magazine? Or maybe your regional numismatic association's publication? If this hasn't been noted before, perhaps you can contact the publishers of your Hungarian coin catalogues, too. Somebody over there might be very interested in this new die-variety/pairing. Your enthusiasm for your little niche in coins is inspiring! Can you imagine, if some US collector found something like this for US coins, it'd be the biggest story of the century...
The author of the latest Hungarian catalog died in 2010. His son finished his works in progress and published them in 2012, but has not kept them up since. At the very least I'm going to publish this in my own catalog. I've taken the die analysis background I've been using with US capped bust coinage and I've been finding all sorts of interesting things with classic Hungarian coinage. Krause has quite a few mistakes of course, and is missing a lot of patterns, but this is the first type I've found that seems to have been a global oversight.
