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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cpm9ball, post: 3495495, member: 24633&quot;]I&#039;ve been collecting medals from France and the Low Countries for 25 years or so. The cornucopia on the edge of your medal indicates that it was made at the Monnaies de Paris (Paris Mint). The Low Countries (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg) often had their medals produced in Paris because they could not afford to operate their own mint.</p><p><br /></p><p>The cornucopia is called a &quot;Different&quot; which is the mintmark for medals produced by the Paris Mint. Beginning in 1841, the Director of the Paris Mint would choose a design for the Different that would represent his tenure in office. This was necessitated because there were a lot of counterfeit medals being made that did not contain any precious metal. Sometime around 1880, France opted to use the cornucopia for all medals.</p><p><br /></p><p>Unfortunately, you probably won&#039;t have any luck getting CT to create a separate forum for medals. There just isn&#039;t enough activity to justify it. I just use the &quot;Coin Chat&quot; forum whenever I want to post a medal.</p><p><br /></p><p>There is no comprehensive catalog for French medals. At one time I considered trying to buy all of the annual catalogs issued by the Paris Mint, but I learned very quickly that just trying to get all of them for the 19th century would cost about $2,000, and that was 15-20 years ago.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are two resources that I find helpful: 1)<b><i> Jetons, Medalets &amp; Tokens: The Low Countries and France, Volume Two</i></b> by Michael Mitchiner, and 2)<b><i> Biographical Dictionary of Medallists</i></b> by L. Forrer. The Mitchiner book is more than 800 pages, and the Forrer compendium is comprised of 8 volumes with 5,200 pages.</p><p><br /></p><p>Chris[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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