FRENCH COIN COLLECTING ?
What are French coins ?
The History of France.
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Why does it concern all Western peoples ? Because this history covers half of the known History of Humanity. Of course, American coins, European coins in general, Greek or Roman coins in general, offer a great deal of Meaning, recall essential events, are also a part of the heritage of souvenirs of your ancestors. But they are collected by thousands of coin-lovers, they are the object of a developed market, they are well-studied in sophisticated reference-books : they are already relatively expensive. |
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Antoninianus of Diocletian
minted in Lyon in 291 |
| Let me give you two examples, illustrated by real sales. By auction
(MONNAIES III 1997 639) we sold a unique gold ecu of the Louis XI
period, minted in 1475, probably in Italy. A gold ecu of this period
is a coin the size of a half-dollar, with the royal warrior's shield
(representing worldly power) on one side and the cross (representing
the king's spiritual power) on the other side. This ecu was unknown.
It was purchased by a collector for 3,500fr or 600$. Why ? It is
a French ecu, it has no references book; no museum had a sufficient
budget, press didn't care to mention discovery, there were no clubs
of serious collectors; there were no collectors specialised in Louis
XI coins. A normal ecu would have sold at 2000 fr.
In our last auction, we discovered an important variation on a gold 100 Franc coin, dating from 1879, a SUP 55. The signature of the General Mint Master is different from usual. As if one were to find an example marked with 'S' for San Francisco on a coin theoretically minted only in Philadelphia. The normal coin was minted in 38 601 copies : how many of these remain ? No- one knows. |
| A 100 Franc coin of this type and of this date would have sold
for 2 500fr . Our coin, with this new variation, sold for 5 100fr
or 1 000$. How much would be worth a 20$ U.S. coin dating from the
1880s discovered with such an important variation ?
A great American dealer who knows Europe very well and speaks several European languages, said that the French numismatic market was comparable to the American numismatic market of the 1950s. |
