Can anyone help me identify this coin?

gemini12398

Pics are too big to post, but I can email them to you as attachments, guys...

Dave

wybrit

Try shrinking the pics to 50k per image.

lordmarcovan

Or upload to photobucket.com.

Or give us a verbal rundown on the design and all inscriptions.

gemini12398

http://i454.photobucket.com/albums/qq268/gemini7_album/Photo0167.jpg

gemini12398

http://i454.photobucket.com/albums/qq268/gemini7_album/Photo0166.jpg

farthing

lordmarcovan

It appears you have a coin of the German state of Passau, probably from the 16th century (early 1500s).

Note the similarities to this other one I found here.





<< <i>PASSAU

Ernst of Bavaria (1517-1540)
#190158 1519 batzen, VF+ Saur 1009. Price reduced 10% buy it $45.00 >>




Very cool, I say. Thanks for the challenge.

gemini12398

Robert, thanks for the help. I think you nailed it. I think my coin is even a little better than the one for sale...

Dave

JimK

Good job there Lord M!
I was looking into Czech/Bohemian coins of this period as this one has lions on it- so that was my first guess.
Also noticed the Bavarian pattern but didn't get that far...
Thanks for sharing gemini, always good to learn new stuff!
Jim

lordmarcovan

Hmm, I dunno. I kind of like theirs a tiny bit better.

But I like 'em both. Very cool stuff.

Funny, I was looking at the lion's leg on the bottom of the obverse of yours and thought it was a "5". That threw me for a moment.

Using the SVB TVO PRESIDIO legend led me down one blind alley (Bohemia, as mentioned in the previous response), and then I got a page in German that showed one side of a similar coin.

I don't speak German, but got "Passau" and "batzen" from that, and did a Google Image search, and bang, ended up on the page I linked to above.

It's nice when an attribution "clicks" like this one did. Part of it was luck, I'll admit.

Cool coin!

lordmarcovan

Cooler still, I just realized these are DATED.

I don't know how I overlooked it, but I was scratching my head over the design, trying to figure out how they attributed that 1519 to one specific year. I didn't see the date. It isn't very clear on their example.

It just leapt out at me from your coin, though. There it is, plain as day, on top of the coat of arms.

1520.

Yours just rose a bit in my estimation. I like it better than theirs, now, for its clear date.

I guess the angle of the pic made me overlook the date before.

Awesome. This early dated stuff really jazzes me.

BCNumismatics

Robertson,
Where's the date on that coin? the name 'Batzen' sounds very much like a Swiss cantonal denomination rather than German.

Aidan.

lordmarcovan

I think "batzen" overlapped boundaries a bit. You're right about it being a largely Swiss Cantonal denomination, though. It's entirely possible that different names were applied, too, since it does not say "batzen" right there on the coin. (One man's "batzen" could be another man's "pfennig" or "kreuzer", for all I know.)

The date on his coin is 1520. It is right at the top of the coat of arms. I overlooked it at first. The coin is rotated slightly in the photo. Look in the top picture that farthing posted for him.

Sapyx

Batzen was indeed originally a Swiss denomination; specifically, from Bern, which has a bear on it's coat of arms - "batzen" is derived from a local German dialect word for "bear". The name was commonly applied throughout "Southern Germany" (including Switzerland) to a coin of 4 kreuzers.