• When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

So that was a privy mark…

There’s only 10 dates / years of issue for the Netherlands 10G coin during the 41-year reign of Willem III. All of these years occurred in a 15-year period from 1875 to 1889. Because of this, he only had one official portrait during this time and all the coins have the same obverse. Because even the date is on the reverse there is absolutely no way to discriminate one issue in the series from any of the others by just looking at the design of the obverse. By contrast, his daughter, ruled for 58 years (longer, but he was still on the throne 4 decades), and Gherrmann44’s 10G set honoring her has, I think, four official portraits on the obverse.

The reverse of the coin is a different story. The 10 issues use a total of three different reverse “designs” for lack of a better word - or so I thought. It’s really two different designs and one of those designs has two variants with different privies… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The 1875 - the first and by far the most common with a mintage (4,110,00) that exceeds that of all the rest of the series combined (3,719,657) - is a 1-year type coin (KM 105).

In 1876 several design features were re-arranged, and the date moved from the top to the bottom of the design. All the coins made from 1876 to 1889 are the same type (KM 106) and are the same except for one small detail: one of the two small marks on either side of the year is different in the last issues of the series. The issues from 1876 to 1887 have a battleax to the left of the date. The 1888 and the 1889 have a halberd.

I have wondered, literally for years, what these marks were and why that one changed at this point. It never occurred to me that these were the mint mark and privy mark. I’m not gonna lie; this makes me feel a bit dumb.

How did I figure this out? By reading the coin descriptions on Coin928’s “Curacao 1900-1948, Complete Circulations Issues” set. On more than one coin in that set he explains that the fish on those coins, next to the date, in the same position as the battleax and halberd are on the 10Gs, is a privy mark. The symbol on other side of the date is the mintmark for the Royal Dutch Mint - it’s a “Staff of Mercury.”

He was nice enough to give me a link to the site where he found this information.

The battleax is the privy for Philip Hendrik Taddel, who served as Mint Master from Nov 1874 to May 1887.

The halberd (hellebaard) was the symbol for Hugo Laurens Adriaan van den Wall Bake (Good grief! What a name!), who served from July 1887 to 1909.

Thanks to Coin928 for the new resource (website) and the information.

1010095_Full_Rev b.jpg

1013450_Full_Rev b.jpg

0



9 Comments


Recommended Comments

It looks like van den Wall Bake made some slight changes in the lettering placement, size, etc. I wonder if this was for aesthetic reasons, or if it was to further differentiate his coins from Taddel's.

Link to comment
38 minutes ago, Just Bob said:

It looks like van den Wall Bake made some slight changes in the lettering placement, size, etc. I wonder if this was for aesthetic reasons, or if it was to further differentiate his coins from Taddel's.

Yeah... With things like that, when talking about 130+ year old coins. I'm never quite sure what's a deliberate "change" and what's a normal, year-to-year, die-to-die variation. With modern coins these things can be reproduced with very tight tolerances but I don't know what the tolerances were like back then. While I take those shots and blow it up huge the coin is only about the size of a US nickel. So those are small variations.

Edited by Revenant
Link to comment
1 hour ago, Just Bob said:

It looks like van den Wall Bake made some slight changes in the lettering placement, size, etc. I wonder if this was for aesthetic reasons, or if it was to further differentiate his coins from Taddel's.

I noticed that, too.  It'd be very interesting to know why these changes occurred, but we likely never will.....coins often keep their secrets well, especially coins this old and back.  If you want to see some craziness with a coin from the 19th century, check out 1859 Canadian Large Cents.  I'm not certain of how many varieties of this coin exist, but I've heard estimates of up to 400!  I know of some collectors who just collect the different varieties of 1859 Large Cents.  That doesn't sound like much fun to me but, hey, we all have our things and that's what makes this hobby great!

It's also great to see you posting about coins again, my friend.  The worry and stress levels must be lower......I'm glad to see it.

Cheers!

~Tom

Link to comment
3 minutes ago, Mohawk said:

 

It's also great to see you posting about coins again, my friend.  The worry and stress levels must be lower......I'm glad to see it.

Cheers!

~Tom

Lol Well, I think the "Samuel Likes Money" post, which I found rather funny and amusing, was torpedoed by what went down with the baby but that was more one of my posts about fatherhood-and-the-coins. There will probably continue to be a mix of those and ones like this as I go forward.

Link to comment

I explore the halberd for my Wilhelmina I 10 Gulden set in my write-up of the 1913 coin. https://coins.www.collectors-society.com/WCM/CoinView.aspx?PeopleSetCoinID=1641694 Additionally, I also name the mintmaster represented by the seahorse privy. The way I understand a mintmaster is that it is the approximate equivalent to our chief engraver. The mintmaster may or may not be the coins designer as is the case of the 1898 10 Gulden coin designed by P. Pander (P. Pander signature located directly below the truncated neck on the obverse). In fact all 4 Wilhelmina I obverse bust designers are different from the mintmaster represented by the privys. Something else of interest on the 10 gulden reverses is the shield on the coat of arms has horizontal lines with dotted rectangles peppered throughout the shield. These markings are equivalent to heraldic tincture that represent colors. The following Wikipedia link explains the correlation between markings on metallic coins and colors.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)  As you can see the horizontal lines are equivalent to the color blue and the rectangles to yellow or gold. These are the exact colors of the Royal Dutch coat of arms.

Link to comment
15 hours ago, gherrmann44 said:

I explore the halberd for my Wilhelmina I 10 Gulden set in my write-up of the 1913 coin. https://coins.www.collectors-society.com/WCM/CoinView.aspx?PeopleSetCoinID=1641694 Additionally, I also name the mintmaster represented by the seahorse privy. The way I understand a mintmaster is that it is the approximate equivalent to our chief engraver.

Well, I may need to go back and do some more reading there. Many of our coins have the initials of the designer but a symbol representing them is a little different.

Edit to add: I know I've checked-out your set-description in the past and looked at your photos but I don't know that I've ever gotten around to digging into your individual coin descriptions much, so if it's in there that might be why I've never caught it.

Edited by Revenant
Link to comment

 

Quote

How did I figure this out? By reading the coin descriptions on Coin928’s “Curacao 1900-1948, Complete Circulations Issues” set.

Thanks for the reference!  The source of this information is no big secret.  The web site  Mark Your Coin describes privy marks, mint marks, and designer marks for quite a few countries including the U.S.

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
1 hour ago, coin928 said:

 

Thanks for the reference!  The source of this information is no big secret.  The web site  Mark Your Coin describes privy marks, mint marks, and designer marks for quite a few countries including the U.S. 

Well, it managed to stay a secret to me. lol

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now