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Denier Tournois - Philippe IV

Issuer France
Year 1290-1295
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Currency Livre tournois (987-1795)
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Obverse description A plain cross pattee occupies the central field, enclosed within a beaded inner circle. The royal Latin legend PHILIPPVS REX, reading 'Philip King,' surrounds the inner circle, itself bordered by an outer grenetis. The die is struck on an irregularly shaped flan typical of hammered medieval billon coinage, with moderate wear visible across the relief.
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Reverse script Latin
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Additional information

Philippe IV inherited a denier tournois coinage already debased well below its mid-century standard, but it was under his own later campaigns of deliberate debasement — driven largely by the crushing financial demands of war with England and Flanders — that billon coinage became something of a political liability. This particular issue, struck in the relatively early years of his reign, predates the worst of those manipulations and holds a marginally more honest fineness than what followed.

The tournois type itself originated at the abbey of Saint-Martin de Tours before the French crown absorbed it wholesale.

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