LOT   /  Toronto Coin Expo Spring Sale 2019  / 

106

1658-A [Paris Mint] Pattern Douzain, piedfort, struck in Silver, Ciani 1976, Duplessy 1579, Gadoury

Currency:CAD Category:Coins & Paper Money Start Price:2,500.00 CAD Estimated At:6,000.00 - 8,000.00 CAD
1658-A [Paris Mint] Pattern Douzain, piedfort, struck in Silver, Ciani 1976, Duplessy 1579, Gadoury

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1658-A [Paris Mint] Pattern Douzain, piedfort, struck in Silver, Ciani 1976, Duplessy 1579, Gadoury 86, Droulers P.015, Breen 274. Extremely Fine, another piece that never saw actual circulation and has some light rub from cabinet storage over 260 years. Everything is sharp, the legends and date full, the design detail bold. Struck in silver as a piedfort, weighing 3.54 grams compared to the authorized 1.854 grams). Toned a lovely golden hue, the surfaces with a faint roughness that isn’t detracting. This type is known in billon, silver and copper, on both regular and piedfort planchets – each metal and thickness variation with a surviving population of just a couple examples. Even rarer than the patter sizain offered above, the ONLY public auction record for this type in North America that we can locate is the Heritage January, 2004 sale of the “Enterprise Collection,” an Uncirculated silver piedfort specimen (weighing 3.7 grams) that brought $5,520 (US) some 15 years ago, before their connection to North America was widely known. There was no example of this type in the John J. Ford sale, the piece catalogued there as a douzain was actually a piedfort sizain (see the above lot for more on this). Breen knew of this piece in silver, giving it the number after the billon issue, but he was uncertain whether the piece he listed was a piedfort, suggesting that he had never seen one in person. None have apparently been submitted to any of the grading services, which do not even have a category for the coin (though a single sizain was certified and has its own category). Also unknown in any of the French museum collections – or the British Museum, Bank of Canada or American Numismatic Society. It is surprising that the Cabinet des Medailes in Paris did not retain examples of any of the 1658 patterns, in any of the metals, for its own collection, since they were clearly made with great care – especially those in silver as piedforts which were the most important strikes of the time! While it’s tempting to jump to the conclusion that it was because they were being produced for Canada and thus not “French enough” to keep, that doesn’t ring true since that cabinet did keep an example or two of the 1641 Quinzain offered above. This just adds to the mystery surrounding this issue. The last time both the sizain and douzain were offered together was 2004 and needless to say, these are two of the highlights of this collection.
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