Hey guys. I found this coin today that I got at the Denver Coin Show back in May. Still dont know exactly what it is! I think the date is 1870, and I know it’s some centimes denomination from France, but beneath the eagle is a W mintmark and I can’t find any that have a W mintmark on Numista. Hopefully someone knows better than I do!
If you give the diameter, I could tell you what denomination it is. The W mintmark is Lille, and was used from 1853-1857 on these coins.
It's either 5 or 10 centimes. I'm guessing 10. The 5 is about the size of a British half penny. The 10 is about the size of a U.S. half dollar. There's a ton of these out there and most of them are worn. You see them in a lot of dealers' junk boxes and unless they have at least a readable date they're not worth messing with even at 25 cents. Yours doesn't have any collectible value.
Thanks everyone. I was clearly wrong on the date! I'll get the diameter when I get home. I did get it out of a junk bin for 25c. Plus, I'm not really in it for the collectable value-- just the learning experience!
Speaking of the learning experience... When I was a young kid I lived in France, and found an old box hidden in a shed. That box contained a couple hundred old French coins, the most common being this coin you have. Most were very well worn, until you could hardly make out dates. To this day I can still recall the smell of that box, it smelled like old oxidized copper, I guess.
Funny. That’s pretty awesome though, must’ve been really cool to see them all together. It’s funny, I know what you mean by that copper smell, must be some way the copper reacts with the oils on our hands or something. This one has it, it also has this interesting black tarnish that comes off on your fingers or paper!
An advanced search on numista.com allows you to put in the diameter of a coin. Takes out a lot of guessing work. The coin is pretty common, but still a cool piece of history.
Most definetely is cool! For $0.25 the learning experience is totally worth it. I got a lot of other interesting foreigns with this. Including some very interesting French territory coins of various locations in Africa and Asia. Still common, but cool. The diameter of this one is 25mm and it weighs 4.50g, so I assume it is the 5 centimes right? I still cant find it on Numista! maybe Im doing it wrong .
The year could be the problem. Your coin seems to be the type that @Siberian Man posted here, but that was minted in 1853-57 as @Dave M wrote. (Numista) In 1870 there were a couple of satirical pieces such as this one. Don't know of a regular 5 centimes coin though ... Christian
With numista, sometimes less is more. The corrosion and circulation may have made the coin lighter. I did an advanced search with France and 25mm diameter and had seven hits, two of which match your coin to a high degree and one is clearly the correct one when looking at how far the crown extends past his forehead. Numista can sometimes be fickle, but it is without a doubt worth learning to search it, if you want to collect world coins. https://en.numista.com/catalogue/in...v=&m=&a=&t=25&dg=&w=&u=&f=&g=&tb=y&tn=y&cat=y @ldhair
Its really easy to find out the denomination through size comparison. A 5 Centime is the same as a Quarter and a 10 Centime is the same as a Half give ore take a tad.
I like the French territory coins a lot, and many of them are more collectible than actual French coins. Coins like these are really interesting to me.
