Nothing special, a couple of one year types...

elverno · July 11, 2005 2:16PM

The Erfurt mint ended production in 1802 when the city became part of Prussia.

1801 - Erfurt, 1 Groschen, 19mm

This Canton of Bern coin had an equivilent value of 1 kreuzer or 1/4 batzen. It's made of billon with an extremely low silver content, only about 8%.

1811 - Canton of Bern, 2½ Rappen, 17mm

Both are fine at best, but not easy coins to find.

Philip · July 11, 2005 3:12PM

Those are very nice, although circulated.

I bet they are not expensive, either.

1jester · July 11, 2005 3:45PM

Very interesting coins, Vern!

Emperor · July 11, 2005 5:36PM

<< <i>The Erfurt mint ended production in 1802 when the city became part of Prussia.

1801 - Erfurt, 1 Groschen, 19mm >>

That's fantastic! The script on the reverse is great.

Steve27 · July 11, 2005 8:02PM

Nice coins, I like that bear on the shield.

sumnom · July 11, 2005 8:15PM

Dang!

elverno · July 11, 2005 11:29PM

<< <i>I bet they are not expensive, either. >>

Actually that's part of their charm for me.

They're around $10 each; I probably spent too much in both cases but I hadn't seen either of them before and that has a lot to do with how much I'll spend. The Erfurt piece is the first I've ever seen from the city. I'm sure our European friends see these things all the time but in the States minors from the German cities and principalities are scarce. The mintage in this case was about 113k. The Bern 2½ rappen was interesting because of what it tells us about some of the relative values. It's casually referred to as a kreuzer in one of my books which helps tell some of the ratios. If 2½ rappen = 1 kreuzer then 5 rappen = 2 kreuzer. 5 rappen also = ½ batzen so 1 batzen = 4 kreuzer or 10 rappen. The Swiss seemed to be the ones using rappen and batzen as values whereas kreuzers were in use in the neighboring German (and some Italian) countries. And in Goriza (an Italian Habsburg city I think) they had this coin:

1802 - Goriza, 15 Soldi / 8 ½ Kreuzer, 27mm

Notice the odd relationship of kreuzers to soldi (a primarily Italian denomination, though related to the French sous). Sorry about the awful scan, it's on my list to be re-photographed some day...

Edited for spelling and lousy math...