✅ SOLVED Hammered of unknown origin, please help...

[yaxthri]

Hi there.
An elderly gentleman, my father, that is slowly loosing his memory had this coin lying on a bookshelf.
A hammered paper thin copperor bronze coin of 1.5cm or 0.5 inch diameter.

He used to collect coins, but mainly modern and some 19th century coinage so this is quite unusual for him to have, especially not placed in one of his coin folders.
Unfortunately he has no recollection of where he bought, was given or found this one, neither does anyone else i the family. I have no idea what it is and no time to look it up myself, I'm in lockdown status with my two-year old son and my wife is working so time is a precious commodity, hahaha....

Anyone please that can identify this one, any help will be greatly appreciated, I'm pretty sure I have seen this cross before, but I can't make out more.
I took some pics lit from one side from different angles to give some contrast to the lettering.






Paco

 

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[DCMatt]

I think it's a Crusader coin. Is that a hand on the reverse? Hard to tell from your pictures.

 

[Red-Coat]

It looks to me like a medieval ‘tornesello’ (sometimes improperly referred to as a ‘denier’) from one of the Doges of Venice. I believe I can see the winged lion of St Mark of Venice (customarily depicted in stylised form with a halo, nimbus to the right and holding the book of Gospels to the left):



These coins were minted in Venice specifically for use by the administrators of the colonies of Coron and Modon, Negroponte and Crete as a replacement for the Frankish ‘denier tournois’, which was last minted in 1350. The diameter of 15mm would be about right, and the coins were struck in an alloy of eight parts copper to one part silver.

This one was from the Doge Andrea Contarini (1367-1382) and is not an exact match for yours, but there are multiple possibilities and I can’t make out which Doge yours might be for (assuming that I am correct about it being a tornesello):

 

[DCMatt]

Is that a hand on the reverse? Hard to tell from your pictures.

Red-Coat is on it. Feathers, not fingers...

An in-focus, high-res picture of the reverse would help a lot.

 

[yaxthri]

Wow, that is one interesting coin that my father has there...
We have been to all thoseplaceson various childhood holidays but I have never seen this coin, as I wrote before, or heard a story of how he got it...
A mystery then..
I'll try my best with some better pics, it has been pretty smoothened by time... when you write reverse you mean the cross side?

 

[DCMatt]

when you write reverse you mean the cross side?

By reverse I meant the winged side, but better pictures of both sides will help get a specific ID on your coin.

 

[yaxthri]

I am still thrilled with this medieval coin find in my parents' home during this lockdown period. It has been a very ''dry'' hunting season for me lately, if you know what I mean.
Ok, so I did my best with my wife's smart-phone (I'm one of those button-mobile-phone tech guys myself :-)...).
Got some different angles to try to get some details better out. This s a selection of the better ones.
Hope these will help you guys to go a step further in your ID research, I can't wait to get some more specific info...

 

[Red-Coat]

Well, it's definitely a Tornesello of Venice. I can now see the circular halo of the lion of St Mark on the reverse more clearly. Also to the left of the lion's wings I believe I can see the word 'VENETIA' and the letters '...ER' preceding it with a stop in between.

The legend 'VEXILIFER.VENETIA' (standard-bearer of Venice) is commonly seen on these coins and I think that's what it would have said in full. Note that the 'E' letters are in stylised medieval form, which usually looks somewhat like this:


I'll think a bit about which Doge it could be but don't hold your breath! There were a lot of them and even more variations on the legends they used around the cross. The lettering style used doesn't make it easy to read them.

 

[cw0909]

cant see the letters very well maybe this will help
near bottom of pg, example of pgs


ANS Digital Library: Venetian tornesello

 

[Mackaydon]

You have your identification work cut out for you; there were 120 Doges of Venice between 726-1797.
Don...

 

[Red-Coat]

You have your identification work cut out for you; there were 120 Doges of Venice between 726-1797.
Don...

Ha ha. True... although the Tornesello was first issued in 1353, so that cuts out 58 of them, plus a number of the later Doges from the time after Venice lost its colonies. I don't think this one is later than 1471, so that narrows it down a lot. Apart from that, for the coin we're looking at here, it's off-centre in an unfortunate way that means the most useful part of the obverse legend is only partially visible. I've tried to match it but have given up.

 

[yaxthri]

You have your identification work cut out for you; there were 120 Doges of Venice between 726-1797.
Don...

Hahaha, yeah right, I'd give up very soon... Well although Red-Coat narrowed that crowd down ther's still a lot of them...

 

[yaxthri]

Red-Coat fantastic work there! Don't worry about the exact ID, it's true its too much off-centre to read the whole text I think.
The only useful thing I can do know is to try to get my father to try to remember more about his coin... Or find out if he has another? Maybe, somewhere?...

 

[Mackaydon]

Using Red-Coats range dates of between 1353 and 1471 (118 years) there were ten doges. Four doges (Fascari, Venier, Cantarini, and Steno) covered 80% of those years.
You may wish to concentrate researching the coin legends (as shown in CW's post number 9 above) of those four based on the probability that one of them minted your coin. Steno: 34.5 years; Cantarini: 18.1 years; Fascari 14.5 years; and Venier 13.0 years.
Don.......

 

[Red-Coat]

You can also download a scanned pdf copy of Alan M. Stahl’s 1985 publication “The Venetian Tornesello: A Medieval Colonial Coinage” at the link below:

https://www.academia.edu/30465157/T...o_A_Medieval_Colonial_Coinage_ANSNNM_163_1985

I can’t remember if you need to create an Academia account before you can download, but a basic account is free and you don’t need to enter credit card details or anything like that. It's a 36MB document so takes a short while.

It’s not a great scan and a little off-centre, but the illustrations at the end can be enlarged rather more than is possible at the website link provided by ‘cw0909’.

 

[cw0909]

found a site that you can enlarge the coin img, i was
having such a prob seeing those plate/illustrations
in the ebooks


from the introduction/summary @ link

The Chalkis Hoard of Venetian Tornesello
More than half of the coins in the hoard (2629 of 4806)
were minted by Doge Antonio Venier, 1382 - 1400


Chalkis Hoard

 

[yaxthri]

Thank you all very much for your time and research so far. Sorry to say no new info from my dad's side...
I will try to download the book from your link Red-Coat, extra thanks for that, hope it works.
I'll post an update as soon and if I have something new to share. This haas been again a very helpful thread for me, TNet is The place to ask...
Happy Hunting all

 

[yaxthri]

So I know now what it is!
Narrowing the thing down to the suggested 4 Doges was brilliant!
I went back to basics took my magnifying lens and noticed that besides the patna there was something like a calcium carbonate patches layer making the letters illegible so I went on and tried my luck with some peroxide solution. I got a little more detail out of them and tried to identify the text. I ended up with ''RAEUHTENO''... ok ''STENO'' of course! But the rest of the letters didn't make sense but I searched for an image of a Steno coin and then everything was clear.
For starters VENETIA on the lion side was correct, many torneselli read VENECIA (I reposted the composite image I had previously posted, keep your eyes on the top left pic).
The text on the cross side is (MIC)HAEL STENO (DUX). Only HAEL is whole, I missinterpreted H for an R, the L is really stylised and worn so I saw a U and lastly I mistook S for an H, but the cut in half TENO I got those right.
So this little pretty coin finally is identified as a Michele Steno (1400-1413) Tornesello of, unfortunately, unknown origin.



https://www.numismaticavaresina.it/venezia/49928/venezia-michele-steno-1400-1413-tornesello-paolucci-38-5.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_Steno

This was a very nice trip into the past, I really enjoyed it, unce more thank you all for your witty input, I would not have completed this ID on my own!!

Great hunts to you,
Paco

 

[cw0909]

excellent, i hadnt got that far from this list,i think i was on Andrea Contarini
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doges_of_Venice#14th_century

found another
https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/ha..._michele_steno_tornesello/537233/Default.aspx