Help in the identification of these two coins... [solved]

8 posts
Usually, I spend a great deal of time doing my own investigation, but alas, I wasn't able to find a match. I am assuming these are Frankish Greece coins issued after the 4th crusades. I checked the normal references such as Malloy and Schlumberger, but it came up empty. I am hoping the members in the French forum can recognize the coins...

Thanks,

QG



A gallery of my coins and artifacts can been seen on FORVM Ancient Coins
Just wanted to reply to say I've looked but come up empty! The first certainly looks like Achaea or slightly earlier though.

I also suck at reading legends.

Thanks for the interesting puzzle; learned a bit researching them :)
Thanks oggy for spending the time looking. The 1st one seems a bit easier to identify given the 3 pellets to the left and one pellet to the right of the castle on the obverse as well as the retrograde S (Ƨ) in the legend on the reverse, but it didn't help :(

My analysis is similar to yours, Achaea for the 1st and Epirus for the second, but it is just a guess at this point. Got to see if I can find a copy of Metcalf in the library, it might help...
A gallery of my coins and artifacts can been seen on FORVM Ancient Coins
The retrograde S actually seems to point to Antioch, or perhaps even an anonymous Jaffa issue?

I tried looking for the pellets first! And then tried matching the legends lol, but no luck. Does not help that the only catalogue I have for this stuff is google.
Quote: "oggy"​The retrograde S actually seems to point to Antioch, or perhaps even an anonymous Jaffa issue?

​I tried looking for the pellets first! And then tried matching the legends lol, but no luck. Does not help that the only catalogue I have for this stuff is google.
Interesting! Let me check those. ​Schlumberger is available for free download in archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/numismatiquedelo00schl/page/n5
A gallery of my coins and artifacts can been seen on FORVM Ancient Coins
Thanks for that link.

I'm slowly reading through this book online to learn about it.

http://www.numismatas.com/Forum/Pdf/David%20Ruckser/Coins%20of%20the%20Crusaders.pdf

Crusader issues seem interesting, but I just don't have the income for yet another field.

I'm already struggling to import my Lantaka cannon coinage.... Apparently the government disagree that they are coins, and costs are mounting
Hello,

The observe (second pictures), should be rotate at 90 degrees counterclockwise.
For me, those coins are bulgar imitations of two "denier tournois" minted in the Despotate of Epirius under John II Orsini.

First coin :
Observe : +IOIS DES[...] with retrograde S
Reverse : DE SA C[A]ST[...] with retrograde S

Second coin :
Observe : +I[...]ESPOTIVS
Revers : [...]ATA CASTIV

Those degenerated legends stand for "+IOhS DESPOTVS" and "DE ARTA CASTRV" with a crudely realised "châtel" on the reverse sides.

A denier of John II Orsini : https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/pavlos_s_pavlou_numismatist/131/product/crusader_statesgreeceepirusjohn_ii_orsini_13231335bidenierstruck_at_arta/403598/Default.aspx

Apparently some imitations of those deniers were found in the Vidin hoard in Bulgaria where some of them seem to have been minted :
https://books.google.fr/books?id=j0lfCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT301&lpg=PT301&dq=vidin+imitation+denier+orsini&source=bl&ots=cd7Sxky6NZ&sig=Yr_iTYlWg2jTqNfqy9tgrdyOSMU&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjRnq722JjeAhXJxIUKHcePAH4Q6AEwAHoECAAQAQ#v=onepage&q=vidin%20imitation%20denier%20orsini&f=false (in french)

And pages 292 and- 298 : http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE0024053/murdzhev_p.pdf (in english)
Thank you so much for the detailed analysis! Now I have enough information to research this further...

QG
A gallery of my coins and artifacts can been seen on FORVM Ancient Coins
Status changed to Solved (Quant-Geek, 22-Oct-2018, 14:31)

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