Return to the List of Articles

HISTORIC TRADE COINS:PART 3

By Stephen M Huston, R-3266, San Francisco

THE ENGLISH SILVER PENNY

England’s kings adopted a silver penny by the 11th Century which usually bore a facing bust of the king on the obverse and a cross on the reverse. This coinage included many varieties and styles during many reigns, but its overall appearance was sufficiently uniform that collectors who do not specialize in the series have difficulty identifying which king issued a given coin.

During the period of roughly 1000 to 1440, the English penny was used internationally due to several different forces. The first reason was the “defeat” of the English in a series of Viking raids. Not only was coinage captured and taken home by Viking raiders, but the English kings agreed to pay the vikings to postpone future raids. This “Danegeld” payment was measured in the tons of English silver pennies. The Vikings hauled them home and used them to supplement their own limited coinage supplies. Danes produced copies of them to such an extent that English pennies became their coinage standard.

Later, as English trade with Europe expanded, the English penny reached Northern and Western Europe in payment for goods in such quantity that it was more profitable for European mints to produce copies of it---known as “esterlings” or “sterlings”--- than to issue their own city coins, which had only local acceptance.

As the English royal family intermarried with the French royal line, lands were acquired in France which fell to the English Kings for many years. A mint was established at Calais in France which produced English silver. Its circulation in France was common until the time of Joan Of Arc, whose efforts eventually drove out English influence and coinage.

The last minting of English coins in France ended a few years later in 1440.

THE VENETIAN GOLD DUCAT

Gold coins of all types have traditionally been acceptable in trade because of their intrinsic value, which is largely unaffected by their design or place of use. This does not by itself qualify them as trade coins. Coins which are accepted only by weight are still bullion. Trade coins must be acceptable based on their design to qualify as a trade coin (rather than bullion),

One gold coin stands out above all others as having achieved acceptability over much of the known world based on its reputation and design---enough that it was widely copied by many official and unofficial mints over a very long period.

The gold Ducat of Venice was introduced in 1284 and struck without significant design changes until 1707---more than 500 years! Venice controlled major trade routes to the east and south of Venice during at least half of this long period and the Venetian ducat became a standard along these routes from Italy, east to the Levant (the coastal region of the Middle East) and into India and south into Egypt and Africa.

During the late Crusade era the designs were copied by Crusaders in the Eastern Mediterranean including the Holy Land and Egypt. Other Italian cities also copied the design to facilitate their own trade. Copies of the Venetian Ducat carry the design of St Mark and the kneeling Doge/Christ standing.

Among those who made extensive copies, only a few bothered to modify the inscriptions to actually identify their own issues and allowing us to identify them: Rome (under the Senate), Genoa (and its branch mints including Chios), Mantua, Savoy, the Knights of Malta, Dombes in Burgundy, England (for its Levant trade), and Florence (in 1805 for its Levant trade). The anonymous copies are quite numerous from the Levant and from India.