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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;brg5658, post: 2400193, member: 29751&quot;]You have it the wrong way around.&nbsp; The original French spelling was pie<b>d</b>fort.&nbsp; The English misspelled it as piefort.&nbsp; Also, piedfort coins often (mostly) come as proof strikings, so not sure where you got the &quot;business strike format&quot; information.&nbsp; Just do <a href="http://www.ebay.com/sch/Coins-World-/256/i.html?_from=R40&amp;_nkw=piedfort" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.ebay.com/sch/Coins-World-/256/i.html?_from=R40&amp;_nkw=piedfort" rel="nofollow">a search on eBay for &quot;piedfort&quot;</a> and you&#039;ll see the vast majority of modern piedforts are &quot;proof&quot; strikings.&nbsp; Historically, I&#039;d say it&#039;s about half and half struck with proof like (by USA definition) surfaces.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Lots of generalizations here that are also not really true.&nbsp; ESSAI is sometimes struck on the coin as part of the legend, in the same size as other text.&nbsp; And, essai coins by and large do not have different &quot;quality finish&quot; -- but they are simply very carefully struck and at higher pressures -- so they are usually considered what we in the USA would call &quot;specimen&quot; pieces.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>EDIT:&nbsp; And, as [USER=17469]@Dave M[/USER] has pointed out below, many of the older French coins labeled as &quot;ESSAI&quot; are actually equivalent to what we would call &quot;patterns&quot; in the USA parlance.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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