6stuiver rijderschelling Daventria 1688 with text variety

[madelinus]

Recently acquired this 6stuiver rijderschelling Daventria 1688. Normally a common piece, but I noticed a strange text variety. I read CONOORDIA in stead of CONCORDIA. Also the N seems corrected. Anyone seen this before?

Weight 4,72 gram, size 27mm.

[SpaBreda]

I am no expert on this subject, but a quick look around the net gave me a few more text errors ...
Among them this one 

Paul.

[derek]

Hi, although I live in Holland, I know little to nothing about dutch coins, but this seems fake to me.
there are more letters that are strange, like the last 'a' in Daventria. The wear is in strange places, like the horses head, whereas the letters next to it show no wear. Is it thicker in the middle than at the edges ?  grts Derek

[Pellinore]

I wouldn't think of this as a modern forgery. Why would you imitate an ordinary coin like this, and then present it with so much wear? Schellings were coins often slovenly made, used for many years. Don't know if they were subject to contemporary imitations.
-- Paul

[madelinus]

Besides 1 en 2 stuivers and guilders, in Holland rijderschellings were the main currency during the whole 18th century. Nearly all produced in the 1685-1691 period. Because of this popularity there are lots of contemporary forgerys. Actually, I found several fake pewter schellings and also some silverplated copper-alloy ones. But I believe this is a genuine one because of the simularities with other copies of this year 1688. (the last A in Daventria is actually an AE).
There must have been lots of dies produced for this particular year, so mistakes seemingly occurred.

[Figleaf]

Indeed, and there is more. Dutch mints were using old-fashioned machinery until they started modernising late in the 18th century. This easily explains the weak spots (uneven flans). Madelinus is a detector pilot. His finds spent time in the ground, the last part near the surface, where they are easily damaged by agricultural implements. This can well explain the flattening of the crown and upper part.

The reason why the Dutch mints were slow in accepting new techniques is that they were of a different character than mints in kingdoms and the like. Due to historical reasons, there were far too many mints in the country. The largest mints were assured to get orders from their own province. The smaller mints were always threatened with closure and regarded with hostility by the provinces they were not in. As a result, they were not so much prestigious providers of a service to the king for his people, but rather the price-fighters of the Republic in a hyper-competitive situation.

In that situation, cost were cut to the bone. That led to the bigger mints being attentive to cost also, albeit to a lesser degree. The result was cheap (relatively inexperienced) die sinkers and getting as much work done as possible in as little time as possible. As the new machines often broke down, due to lack of precision, mints stuck to proven methods. In small mints, errors were more likely to be acceptable or overlooked to speed up production. The legends were especially error-prone as they had to fit around the edge, which took a significant part of the die sinker's concentration away from spelling.

Given those circumstances, it is amazing that there are not many more legend errors.

Peter

[madelinus]

Thanks Peter for your contribution! Indeed I'm a detectorist, but also a collector. This coin is a purchase, I don't think it is excavated.