Brabant 1541 couronne d'or Fr-62
This specimen was lot 883 in Jean Elsen sale 156 (Brussels, September 2023), where it sold for €7,500 (about US$9,623 including buyer's fees). The catalog description[1] noted,
"BRABANT, Duché, Charles Quint (1506-1555), AV écu d'or au soleil, 1541. Hybride avec un lis comme différent au revers. D/ Ecu couronné d'Autriche-Bourgogne, accosté de deux briquets. R/ Croix fleurdelisée, cantonnée de deux aigles et de deux tours. De la plus haute rareté. Très Beau. Provient de la vente Loudmer & Poulain, Drouot, Paris, 21 octobre 1977, 141 et de notre vente 94, 15 décembre 2007, 1177. (duchy of Brabant, Charles V, 1506-55, gold écu of the sunburst of 1541, mule with a lily as a privy mark on the reverse. Obverse: crowned arms of Austria-Burgundy between two firesteels; reverse: floriate cross cantonned with two eagles and two towers. Of the highest rarity, very Fine.)
Hybride associant un coin de droit de Brabant avec un revers de Bruges. Le second exemplaire connu après celui de la collection Vernier qui est frappé avec le même coin de revers mais un coin de droit différent. On peut donc en conclure que la pièce fut frappée dans un atelier de Brabant, probablement Anvers, où un coin de Flandre fut utilisé par erreur. (This is a mule combining a obverse die from Brabant with a reverse die from Bruges. The second known copy after that of the Vernier collection which is struck with the same reverse die but a different obverse die. We can therefore conclude that the coin was struck in a workshop in Brabant, probably Antwerp, where a die from Flanders was used by mistake.)"
The couronne d'or was issued from Antwerp and Maastricht (Fr-63) in Brabant 1542-55, as well as Flanders (Fr-309), Holland, Gelderland (Fr-73) and elsewhere. Couronnes d'or were struck again in the Spanish Netherlands about 1615-42 but by then the northern provinces had seceded. The Antwerp mint did not actually make this coin in 1541 but in 1542 or 1543 using an old die from the Bruges mint, where production of Fr-209 had started in 1541.
Recorded mintage: unknown.
Specification: 3.31 g, 0.919 fine gold, this specimen is 3,28 g.
Catalog reference: Fr-62 (unlisted date), G.H. 186-5 (note); D.d.P. p. 104, 1 (note); coll. Vernier 132 (same reverse die); V.H. 223 (note).
- Delmonte, A., Le Bénélux D'or, Amsterdam: Jacques Schulman N.V., 1964, with supplements to 1977.
- Friedberg, Arthur L. and Ira S. Friedberg, Gold Coins of the World, From Ancient Times to the Present, 9th ed., Clifton, NJ: Coin and Currency Institute, 2017.
- van Gelder, H. Enno, and Marcel Hoc, Les Monnaies des pays-Bas Bourguignons et Espagnols, 1434-1713, Amsterdam, J. Schulman, 1960, with supplement of 1964.
- [1]Elsen, Philippe, et al., Vente Publique 156, Collection de Monnaies de la Principauté de Liège, Brussels: Jean Elsen et ses Fils S.A., 2023.
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