AV Ecu d'or au Soleil 1635-B Rouen Mint Louis XIII 3.37g. 25mm.

Lovely.

I had a mid-1500s Francis I ecu d'or au soleil back in the late 1990s, and rather miss it a bit.

You can actually see luster on your example! I doubt that particular piece saw much circulation at all!

My Francis I was XF++ to AU-ish, as I recall. I swapped it for a metal detector. (The minister who married my wife and I in 1999 was/is an avid detectorist and a good friend.) Now retired, he has continued to call us every year for the past 17 years to wish us a happy anniversary. This year I told him that if he ever wants to sell that coin back to me, I'd love to buy it. He mentioned he still has it, in my old holder, but didn't mention any interest in selling it back to me, so I did not press the issue.

 

Yes, and they no doubt have prices that a mere peasant "lord" like myself could never hope to afford! LOL

But I did just buy that Brabant florin we discussed, so I did recently acquire another piece of 16th century hammered gold, as it happens. I still need to post the writeup on that one (#5 in my present sig line image).

Hammered gold is not something I can afford on a regular basis!

 

Had you been around when I was still collecting, you would have

 

These two weren't FDC but I think they'll serve to kinda give ya the idea

 

@GDJMSP - all I can say is "WOW".

I still haven't done my writeup on this one (perhaps because that will require some actual thinking on my part, haha)

Much more modest grade, but nice toning, in my humble opinion:

 

Yeah, that was kind of my opinion too Rob A lot of the coins in my collection had varying degrees of what I often referred to as the wow factor. In fact I used to advise people, still do somewhat, that they wanted to buy the coins that made them say WOW !

Over the years I've posted pretty much all of them around here. And every now n them it makes me smile to post them again

 

I enjoy posting some of my "bygones", too. They're never totally bygone if I have a picture and a fond memory.

 

Well then, you should really like this one When I owned it it was the finest known, may well still be.






When it comes to history, and the story behind the coin, in my opinion this one stands above all others


PS - don't get me started on ducats

 

@GDJMSP - holy cow, man. What is that? A chevalier d'or?

Wow. That's what it is. A wow.

 

Cavilier d'or, chevalier d'or - those are a couple of the names the coins are known by, depending on what country the coin was minted in, the person speaking, or book, is from. But it's primary name, since the ultimate minting authority was given by Jean le Bon of France, is the franc à' cheval. And for those who don't know, it was the first French franc ever minted.