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Obol - Matthias Corvinus
| Issuer | Hungary |
|---|---|
| Year | 1458-1460 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 0.26 g |
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| Obverse description | Central field occupied by the Hungarian arms displaying four horizontal bars (the so-called Árpád stripes), rendered in a bold, deeply struck style characteristic of mid-fifteenth-century Hungarian hammered billon coinage. A patriarchal double cross is visible to the left of the shield, serving as a mint or die-cutter mark. The design fills the irregular flan with no surrounding legend, the field surfaces showing the typical granular texture of billon fabric. |
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| Mint | Various mints (Buda, Kassa, Körmöcbánya, Nagybánya, Eperjes, Rimaszombat, Szeben) |
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| Additional information |
Matthias Corvinus seized the Hungarian throne in 1458 at nineteen, elected by a faction of lesser nobles who assumed he'd be manageable. He wasn't. These early obols belong to the first years of his consolidation, before his military campaigns and the later fiscal reforms that would reshape the kingdom's coinage entirely. The billon content of these pieces reflects chronic silver shortages that had plagued the Hungarian mint system since the mid-fifteenth century.
H#700 and H#701 represent distinct die varieties catalogued separately by Huszár despite near-identical weights.