Flatty, Fatty, and Bendy (ID on Fatty and More Info on All 3)

MoeSzyslak

The story:
My collection is 99% liteside, but a friend of mine recently purchased several darkside coins from an estate sale. The majority were notgeld and other German issues. He's identified most of them from the Lamb and Krause catalogs but there are some that had him stumped. He showed me a few of his unidenitfied examples and I was very intrigued. Now, I really wanna know what they are, and when and where they came from.


The Descriptions:
Flatty looks to be a medieval bracteate, about 23mm in diameter. The image is of some sort of seated space alien with an afro, and inner tubes around his torso. He's holding a globeate cross in one hand and an unidentified object in the other. To his left and right are objects that look a bit like tiny coffins.

Fatty is about 12mm in diameter and very high relief. The obverse(?) shows a standing horse with an unknown legend above. The "saddle" and spot beneath the horse look like mineral deposits.
The reverse has an incuse hole under what could be a hill with the sun rising (or setting) behind it. At first, I thought it might be ancient Greek or middle-eastern since, if you turn the hill upside-down it looks a bit like a oil lamp, but the legend looks runic. Googling for help with runes produces far, far too many results containing stuff about hobbits, magic cyrstals, and 12-sided dice.

Bendy is 25mm in diameter, and nearly as thin as Flatty. Composition looks to be silver, with a coating of another metal (bronze?). The coating has oxidized severely, and is very brittle. The coin has been bent, causing some of the coating to flake off around the bends. The obverse(?) depicts four shields within a cross. The reverse has a double-headed eagle. It's obviously German, maybe 15th or 16th century? The legend appears to be in Latin, but I am unable to make out enough of it for my feeble language skills to be of any use.


The Pictures:

Flatty:


Fatty:


Bendy:


The black bar in the photos represents one centimeter. Thanks in advance for any information or hints you can provide.

1jester

Moe, welcome to the Darkside! Thanks for sharing these very interesting coins.

Unfortunately, I can't be of much help in identifying them. The first one is mose definitely a bracteat, probably from the 12-13th century, and it could be German or Polish. Very pretty coin!! I don't know anything about the second, and I can't add much about the third one because I can't see the writing very well. Also, I'd suggest that the coating is a layer of very old oxidation, not a separate metal layer.

I'm sure you'll have some more responses from the experts soon!

MadMuffin

The second coin could very well be Greek, either from the homeland or from one of the colonies. The Greek had a certain way of striking their coins so that one side was deeply incuse and the other side got a very high relief.

The third coin - I will try and work a little on the picture to make the legend easier to read. I'll get back to you if nobody beats me to it. The coin could be German, but there are also other possibilities. Judging from the style of the letters I'd say it's from the 1400s or very early 1500s.

Marcel

MoeSzyslak

Thanks for the responses. I can't say I'm a convert yet, but I've seen some pretty cool stuff here on the dark side.



<< <i>The second coin could very well be Greek, either from the homeland or from one of the colonies. The Greek had a certain way of striking their coins so that one side was deeply incuse and the other side got a very high relief. >>



I thought that as well, based mainly on the high relief on the horse. I didn't want to just stroll in here as a newbie and demand help without doing any work on my own, so I first went through just about everything from within or near Greece on Wildwinds and a few other sites. I didn't find anything I felt was close enough, though. The abstracted incuse design is a real puzzler.



<< <i>The third coin - I will try and work a little on the picture to make the legend easier to read. I'll get back to you if nobody beats me to it. The coin could be German, but there are also other possibilities. Judging from the style of the letters I'd say it's from the 1400s or very early 1500s. >>



Unfortunately, because of the damage, sometimes it's difficult to tell what's part of a letter and what isn't (for me, anyway). I can get larger pictures of the legend if you like. The scans my friend sent were huge.

MadMuffin

I've been working on the picture to try and clarify the legend, but there is too much of that dark stuff on the coin, especially on the reverse. I don't think that a larger image will make any difference, but you can always try.

One of the things I tried was to make a negative image. That will sometimes show details not visible in a common picture. Maybe the negative image can help someone ID the coin:



Sorry I couldn't help you more. One thing you could try though is to contact someone who knows about medieval coins. There is an Ebay seller with the user name "hagadorn_coins" that always offers some nice coins and seems to know a lot about what he or she is selling. You may try to email that seller and ask for his help. You can point him directly to this thread.

Marcel

1jester

Is the eagle on the third coin really double-headed? If not, it sure looks like a Polish eagle. However, I'm stumped by the 4 coats of arms on the reverse.

lordmarcovan

I agree that #1 ("Flatty") is a medieval bracteate.

I have no freakin' idea what #2 ("Fatty") is. The theory about it bein' Greek sounds good to me.

Ditto for #3 ("Bendy")- I'm stumped again, though it certainly is European and more from the Renaissance era (I'm thinkin' 16th century).

earlwbollinger

The middle coin "Fatty" appears to be a Greek ancient coin.
I don't have access to my books at the moment, but off the head:
The deep incuse on the reverse is typical of the 450-350BC type of coins minted in several
Greek cities at that time period.

CARIA, ANTIOCHEIA ad MAEANDRUM (near Phrygia);IONIA; PHYGELA
Maroneia liked to put horses on their coins too, the horse faces the same direction as their other coins do.
But the Maronea coins I remember typically had something like a grapevine on the rev.

Macedonia used horses on some coins, I don't remember the deep incuse on any though
Carthage did too but not with the deep incuse on the rev.

Except for Maroneia, the horses were all facing the other way on the coins I remember.

MoeSzyslak

Thanks again, everyone.

I don't know if it'll help, but hers are some larger pictures of the eagle-side legend (both normal and negative) on the third one. I apologize for the format. I had to cut out the design to get 'em in at under 50k.




I may be wrong, but it looks like IOBR*II on the second rim piece and IONC on the third.

Askari

I agree with MadMuffin that it's probably around 15th century, but that puts it well outside my expertise. Just going on the few design elements I can make out, like the eagle, I'd say it's probably from the region extending from Poland to Brandenburg, and something tells me Poland is more likely. (A Solidus?) I simply cannot make out enough of the legends to do any good. Moe, can you make out what designs are in the 4 shields? Usually you only see 2 or 3 shields conjoined; 4 is quite unusual.

MoeSzyslak

<< <i>Moe, can you make out what designs are in the 4 shields? Usually you only see 2 or 3 shields conjoined; 4 is quite unusual. >>


I've been working on it, as has my friend. The coin isn't in the best shape, as you can see, but, if I were more familiar with the iconography of the time, I could probably pick out a few elements.

Four shields is more common than I originally thought. In my searching, I've seen four shields arranged in a cross on several British coins, and four shields inside a cross on a handful of German ones, such as this coin, and #487 on this PDF file. Unfortunately, neither of those have the more Maltese-style cross that's on the coin my friend has.

We've also found what is at least a relative of Flatty's space alien.

I still think the legend on Fatty looks more like runes than Greek letters, but I've seen a lot of similarly-produced coins from 2nd-4th century BC Greece.

earlwbollinger

Fatty doesn't appear in any of my books, so it beats me as to where it's from.
Hopefully it isn't one of the many thousands of realistic "museum souvenirs" that came out
of Bulgaria a while back.
You might want to post the images of the coin on This forum "Forum Ancient Coins"
and see if any of them have seen it before.

Humm, the reverse has bothered me for a while, now when I think about it, this may be a Celtic coin.
The Celts tended to copy a lot of the Greek coinage and tended to have abstract images based on them.
It may be a Celtic coin.

1jester

Earl, I also thought Fatty might be a Celtic coin.

Askari

I don't think it's Celtic. The reverse image is pretty clear and looks like nothing I've ever seen on them. The circle below the bow looks modern, btw. Perhaps someone once tried to drill into it? I can't even make out a design on the obv., just a few Greek letters. In fact, it looks damaged, from the pic.

MoeSzyslak

<< <i>I don't think it's Celtic. The reverse image is pretty clear and looks like nothing I've ever seen on them. >>


Well, dang. I didn't exactly expect to learn the name of the guy who made it, but I was hoping we could narrow it down to tribe, nation, or empire. So far, everything my friend has identified out of this collection has been German, Prussian, Danish, or HRE. Was anyone besides the Celts making coins in that area 1500+ years ago?


<< <i>The circle below the bow looks modern, btw. Perhaps someone once tried to drill into it? I can't even make out a design on the obv., just a few Greek letters. In fact, it looks damaged, from the pic. >>


It may not be original, but it's certainly not modern. The hole is very smooth, almost parabolicm, and the raised metal around the hole is very even, both in height and width. I couldn't see any signs of modern tooling even at 20x.

earlwbollinger

I've pretty much gone through everything I have and know of looking for the Fatty coin.
As much as I hate to think of it, you may have some of the modern fakes or replicas sold to tourists.
It seems the latest fake fad is to sell made up bags of "unsearched" ancients just found hoards to unsuspsecting people.
A lot of the current batches of "unsearched" found hoards are actually fakes. They cast up or strike batches of poor quality coins
and then quickly age them to make them look old and dug up.
A couple of years ago I bought one batch, and after cleaning them as best we could we found a nice Bulgarian small value coin in the bunch. After looking at the other poor quality coins, we determined they were all fakes. Although the Bulgarian coin is in my son's coin collection.
You may want to carefully check the rim edges for any signs of tooling, like removing casting marks, earring or pendant mounting tabs, etc. This does look similar to some silver earrings I got for my wife a few years ago, but those were replicas based on the Lydian coins.
In looking through a lot of fake pictures there are some that look similar to your other two coins as well.
So unfortunately I don't know.
I hope they are real, as they are pretty neat looking.
Sorry.

MoeSzyslak

<< <i>As much as I hate to think of it, you may have some of the modern fakes or replicas sold to tourists. >>


The story that my friend heard was that the old man put together the collection while stationed in Germany during the early fifties. We know stories aren't always true, but I don't think there was any intent to deceive on the part of the seller. The total for the lot came out to about $1 per coin, and even the notgeld and kriegsgeld are worth $1 or so each. The collection also included a Carolina Elephant Token. That baby promptly went to Heritage. I didn't even get to see it.

A fake could still be a possibility, I suppose. Even 50 years ago, I'm sure there were a few copies floating around. I see no evidence that "Fatty" was cast, though.


<< <i>Sorry. >>


I do appreciate your efforts, all of you, and thank you for your time. "Fatty" is indeed a mystery. I'll probably give the ancients forum a shot before I give up. If I ever do find out what it is, I'll certainly let y'all know.

MoeSzyslak

It's nothing against you fine folks, but I tried RCC Thursday night, and received a very helpful reply about "Fatty" on Friday. Fatty is


<< <i>...an archaic triobol from the island of Kephallenia in the Ionian Sea, struck around 500-480 BC at the town of Kranion. The design on the reverse is supposed to represent a bow. It's listed in Sear (#2669)... >>


This same gentleman also gave his best opinions on the other two. He suggested that the bracteate was...
"...perhaps from the Abbey of Quedlinburg circa 1200 AD..." and the last one "...a groschen from Brandenberg circa 1500". We got the date close, anyway.

I thought some of you would like to know what I found out (rather, what someone else found out for me).

I have one more picture of a stumper. I'll post it in the next day or two.

lordmarcovan

Sounds like you found somebody who really knew his stuff. Impressive.

earlwbollinger

Cool.
Glad somebody knew what they are.

1jester

Moe, I'm glad you got them IDed!

Askari

I'm glad I got the neighborhood of the last one right -- and was correct about what the second was not. "Partial credit" is good when you can't get the hard questions completely right!

MoeSzyslak

<< <i> "Partial credit" is good when you can't get the hard questions completely right! >>


You do indeed deserve partial credit. You knew a lot more than I did (not that it's difficult to do), and were most helpful.

Anyone here may have gotten Fatty had I realized that the obverse depicted a ram and the reverse a bow.