✅ SOLVED French 1600s jetton information requested

Almy

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Mar 18, 2011
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I bought this jetton from a coin dealer a few years ago. I live in an area whose first European settlers were French in the 1600s. I've never found a coin or relic here from that period, and wanted one, so I got the jetton. I have many English coins from the early settlement period (late 1700s) and wanted to cover the whole era with at least one coin.
The coin dealer dated it from 1643 to 1715. It has some Roman numerals on it, but no apparent date. It also has letters, mostly abbreviations, with which I am not familiar.
I'd really appreciate any information that would help understand what all the writing on the jetton means and what its origin and function might have been.
What I read on the obverse is "LVD.XII DG.FR.ETNAV.REX" and on the reverse "CT.T.TTOR.SVIT LA.VICTOIRE" and across the bottom "RE PF" and last "11D". Photo of both sides attached.
Our tremendous resource "Red Coat" (we have some in Canada, they are called RCMP) has been revealing all sorts of interesting details about finds lately and I hope he hasn't run out of energy by the time this one is posted!
Jetton French 1700 (1).jpg
Jetton French 1700.jpg
 

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Our tremendous resource "Red Coat" (we have some in Canada, they are called RCMP) has been revealing all sorts of interesting details about finds lately and I hope he hasn't run out of energy by the time this one is posted!

Thanks for that. I still have some energy, although it has been sapped a bit by what I thought was a cold... but I used a Flowflex antigen test kit about an hour ago which has shown a positive for Covid. Bummer.

Nice Jetton, but you don’t have the legends quite right. They’re

LVD. XIIII D.G. FR. ET NAV. REX / LE REPOS SVIT LA VICTOIRE

The small letters RE and PF either side of the personification of Tranquility, with the royal crown on her knee are for “RechenPfennig”, confirming that this was a jetton, used as a counter for reckoning purposes. The imagery evokes the “Truce of Regensburg” (or “Paix de Ratisbon”, depending which side you were on) signed in 1684 between King Louis XIV (expressed on the jetton as LVD. XIIII) and Emperor Leopold I. The legend “LE REPOS SVIT LA VICTOIRE” translates as “Rest follows the victory” since the treaty concluded the War of the Reunions, fought by France against Spain and the Holy Roman Empire.

It’s unlikely to be French in origin though, and was almost certainly produced in Nuremberg, Germany although the intended market may well have been French. There are loads of die combinations and variations for jettons like this, with makers often using essentially the same designs. The closest I could find is this one, although by no means identical:

Hoger Jetton.jpg

https://fr.numista.com/catalogue/exonumia372050.html

Note that this has the initials “I.C.H.” below the figure of Tranquility (for Johann Conrad Höger who was a Guild Master in Nuremberg between 1705-1743) but yours has “IID” which will be Johann Jacob Dietzel, a Nuremberg Guild Master between 1711 and 1748. In those times, ‘I’ and ‘J’ were interchangeable, with ‘J’ often not being used at all.
 

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I knew it! After posting, there would be real expert answers! We have an amazing resource in this site. Thank you PJ, MD and RC! I'm going to file the information with the jetton and also use it to get myself more familiar with the circumstances of the jetton's source and use.
So my jetton was made between 1711 and 1748. Thank you for narrowing it down like that.
BTW my wife and i had COVID, starting about 6 weeks ago. Mine was mostly in my sinuses and, for about 3 days, very achy body. Then I began recovering and was fairly normally active in a couple of weeks. But even today, I feel tired a lot. My wife had lung symptoms, took the antiviral, but still was sicker than I. Her lungs are still not normal. It's nothing to fool around with, and now we have the flu and RSV also being serious for seniors. Hazards of living, and they get more hazardous as we age.
 

Upvote 2
I knew it! After posting, there would be real expert answers! We have an amazing resource in this site. Thank you PJ, MD and RC! I'm going to file the information with the jetton and also use it to get myself more familiar with the circumstances of the jetton's source and use.
So my jetton was made between 1711 and 1748. Thank you for narrowing it down like that.
BTW my wife and i had COVID, starting about 6 weeks ago. Mine was mostly in my sinuses and, for about 3 days, very achy body. Then I began recovering and was fairly normally active in a couple of weeks. But even today, I feel tired a lot. My wife had lung symptoms, took the antiviral, but still was sicker than I. Her lungs are still not normal. It's nothing to fool around with, and now we have the flu and RSV also being serious for seniors. Hazards of living, and they get more hazardous as we age.

Fortunately, I don't have it bad and it feels more like a regular cold. Snuffley but without a streaming nose. Very dry scratchy throat plus joint-ache and general wooziness.

For interest, here's an old engraving showing jettons in use for accounting purposes and, at the link, there's a detailed description of one of ways in which financial calculations could be performed. The 'boards' were either cloth or wood and either had tramline grid markings or squares like a checker-board to designate the numerical or fiscal value of a jetton when moved around the board. Although jettons often borrowed their design from particular coins, they usually had a nominal value of '1' for reckoning purposes which multiplied up according to their position and/or the markings on the board itself, in a similar way to the beads on an abacus.


Jetton Calculation.jpg
 

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RC thanks for the description and picture of the use of jettons. I wondered about that. Don thanks for the best wishes. Thank you both for your your continuing expert contribution to this web site. I appreciate and enjoy being continuously educated, and I am sure many others do too.
 

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