See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration! or register with email

Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!

Double Vierer with shield

Issuer Colmar, City of
Year 1600-1660
Type Standard circulation coin
Value Log in to see details
Currency Log in to see details
Composition Log in to see details
Weight Log in to see details
Diameter Log in to see details
Thickness Log in to see details
Shape Log in to see details
Technique Log in to see details
Orientation Log in to see details
Engraver(s) Log in to see details
In circulation to Log in to see details
Reference(s) Log in to see details
Obverse description Log in to see details
Obverse script Latin
Obverse lettering Log in to see details
Reverse description The reverse displays a bold long cross extending to the coin's edge and dividing the field into four quadrants, a design motif common to small silver denominatons of the Holy Roman Empire. The angles of the cross are plain, with no intervening symbols or mint marks visible in the quadrants. A beaded inner circle frames the cross design, outside of which runs the circular Latin legend S MARTIN PATRON, invoking Saint Martin as patron of the city. The lettering is rendered in a Gothic-influenced lapidary script consistent with Alsatian municipal issues of the early seventeenth century. The coin's irregular flan and variable strike are characteristic of hammered technique.
Reverse script Log in to see details
Reverse lettering Log in to see details
Edge Log in to see details
Mint Log in to see details
Mintage Log in to see details
Additional information

Colmar occupied an uncomfortable position throughout the Thirty Years' War — nominally under Habsburg suzerainty but effectively a free imperial city with its own monetary prerogatives. Small billon and silver issues like this double vierer were the daily workhorses of local commerce when larger regional coinage was hoarded or simply unavailable. The city would pass permanently to France under the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, making the later dates of this emission among the final independent municipal coinage struck before French administration absorbed Alsatian civic minting rights.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE