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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;+VGO.DVCKS, post: 7818922, member: 110504&quot;][USER=116907]@Mammothtooth[/USER], sorry for being so late to this party.&nbsp; (Dumb logistics; dumb story.)&nbsp; Aside from its innate intelligence, your question is especially fun for admitting of good news! </p><p>If you&#039;re willing to go along with the traditional spine of the historical narrative, c. 1096-1291,* you can still find resonantly representative examples of several key intervals, generally at less than $100 each.&nbsp; Often, even to this day, <i>substantially </i>less.&nbsp; Deniers of the kings of Jerusalem are probably the likeliest to go higher than that, but still only into the low three figures.&nbsp; ...That&#039;s as long as you cultivate an appropriately relaxed attitude toward condition.&nbsp; For medievals, as long as you get clear legends and recognizable motifs, stick a fork in yourself; you&#039;re done! </p><p>The following is the main outline of what I did, with a view toward getting examples with the optimal historical and (Doh, Not coincidentally) numismatic bang for the buck.&nbsp; Including Crusader imitations of Byzantine and Islamic prototypes ...along with the prototypes.&nbsp; Along with pics of my examples, this will include links to issues which were bought too long ago to have any. </p><p>If I had any of this to do over again, I&#039;d be wanting an example of Alexios I, the Byzantine emperor whose request for military aid against the Turks gave Pope Urban II the pretext to declare the First Crusade.&nbsp; ...Right, when Alexios had to host the ensuing, er, host in Constantinople, they didn&#039;t hit it off.&nbsp; Minor details like the Great Schism of 1051.&nbsp; Along with how a primary contingent was composed of Norman Italians, led by Bohemond of Taranto, whose dad had invaded the heart of the Byzantine Balkans in the previous decade.&nbsp; It might have been like a small town in New England hosting a motorcycle gang.</p><p>...Lacking pics, here&#039;s a link to only one of the usual suspects, Wildwinds.&nbsp; <a href="http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/byz/alexius_I/t.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/byz/alexius_I/t.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/byz/alexius_I/t.html</a></p><p>Except, an AE follis would give you a cool segue to some of the earliest issues of the Crusaders (...who didn&#039;t go back home).&nbsp; These are folles of Antioch, starting with rare ones all the way back to Bohemond, but easier to find from his cousin and primary regent, with the terrifically Norman name of Tancred.&nbsp; Here, replete with mail hauberk, sword and (too lightly struck) turban --along with the Byzantine Greek abbreviations on the other side.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1343787[/ATTACH] </p><p>From there, I&#039;d be wanting representation of the kings of Jerusalem.&nbsp; Of these, for a collector, Baldwin III (1143-1163) is sort of the Charles the Bald to Baldwin I&#039;s Charlemagne.&nbsp; Much easier --and you won&#039;t be sorry.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p>Here are both of mine, with the &#039;+BALdVINVS REX&#039; and &#039;dE IERVSALEM&#039; legends, and the Tower of David --a precociously early depiction of anything resembling a castle, as compared to contemporaneous European issues.&nbsp; (Funly, by way of Fulk V (d. 1142), Count of Anjou and King of Jerusalem, Baldwin and his brother and successor, Amaury I, were great-uncles of Richard &#039;Couer de Lion&#039; --as Samuel Johnson said, in some entries of the <u>Dictionary</u>, &#039;a beast well known.&#039;)</p><p><br /></p><p>h[ATTACH=full]1343801[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1343805[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]1343806[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>...Granted, the deniers of Amaury (1163-1174), with similar legends, and a comparably schematic rendering of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, run to being a little less, but with negligable loss to your net historical resonance.&nbsp; Here&#039;s the only, frankly crappy example I could find pics of.&nbsp; (These were immobilized into the early 13th century; I bought this one hoping it was one of those.) [ATTACH=full]1343811[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1343813[/ATTACH] </p><p>...And, to second the motion for the eighth time, you obviously need a denier of Bohemond III of Antioch (majority 1163-1201).&nbsp; Not only because the issue is so iconic, but because the reign spans such a broad interval, relative to the fortunes of the &#039;Crusader States&#039; generally.&nbsp; ...Yes, during the reign of Amaury, they were still kicking some butt.&nbsp; Then you get the Battle of Hattin in 1187, leading to the recapture of Jerusalem by Saladin, ...and the Third Crusade, and so forth, through a fascinating but commensurately fraught 13th century.</p><p>...For the earlier 13th century, I&#039;d want to start with &#039;Crusader&#039; (/&#039;Frankish Levantine,&#039; in light of the generational interval involved, from any participants in the Crusades) imitations of Ayyubid dirhams.&nbsp; (Thank you, the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty was none other than Saladin, who trounce the Franks at the Battle of Hattin, and went on to recapture Jerusalem.&nbsp; --Thank you, from the &#039;Franks,&#039; not the Byzantines.&nbsp; In the immediate context, I <i>don&#039;t </i>think &#039;recapture&#039; is hyperbolic.)&nbsp; Here&#039;s one from the earlier phase, as per Malloy.&nbsp; (Going back a couple of decades, this one was dated to 1217 CE, by a graduate student in Boston.&nbsp; --Who was literate in Arabic, just exactly like I&#039;m not.)</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1343837[/ATTACH] </p><p>From that point, you might want some examples of the Ayyubid prototypes.&nbsp; Mine aren&#039;t great, but for them or better ones, I&#039;d heartily recommend Steve Album.</p><p>...And the further you go into the 13th century, the more contrapuntally fraught the narrative outline gets.&nbsp; Anyway, especially since the series (effectively plural) is inexhaustible, those were supposed to be some high points you could hit without a lot of trouble.</p><p><br /></p><p>*My favorite 1-volume overview is the English translation of Jean Richard, <u>The Crusades: C. 1071-1291</u> (Cambridge UP, 1999).&nbsp; It&#039;s, well, a little Francocentric, but, as any Francophile will cheerfully tell you, that&#039;s merely appropriate to the historical dynamics on the ground.&nbsp; ...Not for nothing did the Levantine Muslim chronicles routinely refer to the crusaders as &#039;Franks.&#039;[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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