How does attribution work?

[ChrisHagen]

Greetings Treasurenet!

I recently picked up six uncleaned Spanish coppers from DirtyOldCoins. One of the coins came harshly cleaned, but the guy running the site is sending me a replacement free of charge, so that's good!

Anyway, I've been cleaning these little guys, and they are turning out pretty cool! I've got one with a cross, one with a lion, one with a castle, and one with the date 1659 - my oldest coin that has a date stamped on it! (beating my 1666 John Casimir by seven years.)

But I can't seem to be able to truly identify the coins! I know that Philip IV reigned in 1659, and the coin has VIII and IIII on the other side (with the VIII looking to have been stamped last), so is it just a Philip IV 1659 4 Maravedis overstamped to 8 Maravedis? Is this how I would list the coin if I were trying to sell it? Is there a catalogue system for medieval coins that is similar to KM numbers for modern coins and RIC numbers for ancient coins?

Thanks for reading and especially thanks if you can help me understand this!

 

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[Tom_in_CA]

reply

is it because you want to re-list the coins for sale, in-the-hopes-of turning a profit? If so (and assuming there was potential in those coins to begin with), why doesn't the seller that sold you to you ..... just do that? I mean, I'm assuming he cherry-picked through ahead of time knowing what key-note dates/features to watch for?

 

[Iron Patch]

Those are fairly inexpensive, quite common, coppers, and whether you go into great detail or not, probably won't make much of a difference. So if there's some you can't figure out don't sweat it too much, and just list em as best you can. The time spent would probably not be worth the return.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Those are fairly inexpensive, quite common, coppers, and whether you go into great detail or not, probably won't make much of a difference. So if there's some you can't figure out don't sweat it too much, and just list em as best you can. The time spent would probably not be worth the return.

Which is exactly why some British and European hunters have actually started bagging up common copper coins that are "only" 100 to 500 yrs. old (pesky new stuff to them), and not even bothering to sort or look at them. Because they already know there's just such a flooded market of those european coppers, that ...... there's simply not enough market. I guess the closest analogy that a USA md'r can think of is this: When you're hunting and get wheat pennies, let's face it: any wheatie we see from the '20s and onwards, most of us don't even bother to rub off to see the rest of the date or mint, etc... Why? because we already know that ....... unless it's one of only about 3 wheaties, odds are, in the condition we find them in, they're not worth squat. In fact, unless I have an '09s vdb, I just put all my wheaties back in circulation. I certainly don't bother looking at dates on the '40s/50s orange corroded junk. Same logic for the european hunters, when it comes to their common coppers.

Might there be a '55 double die wheatie in my boxes? I suppose. Might there be a rare copper found in those european grab-bags? I suppose. Likely? No.

 

[ChrisHagen]

is it because you want to re-list the coins for sale, in-the-hopes-of turning a profit? If so (and assuming there was potential in those coins to begin with), why doesn't the seller that sold you to you ..... just do that? I mean, I'm assuming he cherry-picked through ahead of time knowing what key-note dates/features to watch for?

No, I am honestly not hoping to make a profit.
I just want to get rid of superfluous coins and make at least some of the money back that I spent on them.

At $3 USD per uncleaned coin, we aren't exactly taking huge amounts of money here

I've actually managed to identify one of the coins - a Dinero de Aragon of Carlos II.
I couldn't stop laughing when reading about that king - apparently, if I impregnated my mother, our offspring would be LESS inbred than Carlos II was. Hilarious.

Thanks for the replies guys!

The only question I still have is: is there a catalog resource, like the RIC for ancients, and KM for moderns, that I can use for medievals?