Ars: I'm glad to hear that this coin is such an interesting and unusual
type over there in
Russia. I'd be curious to know what
part of the country this coin was found in. Somewhere up
north?
Years ago I put together an online version of "Die Saurmasche Muenzsammlung", a classic
catalog of
medieval German coins. The site let people sample the collection in many ways to
help identify coins like this. For example, if you happened to notice that the coin's
obverse had a large
cross within a shield-shaped outline (typical of the
military orders), you could go to this page:
http://www.medievalcoinage.com/saurma/someoldcoins.org/saur/t/t392.htmOr, if you noticed that the
reverse had a
cross with 3 pellets in each corner like an English penny or a low-countries sterling you could go to this page:
http://www.medievalcoinage.com/saurma/someoldcoins.org/saur/t/t396.htmEither way, you'd find your coin in the list, #2692. If you then clicked on that coin's number or picture you would get all of the details supplied by the Saurmasche
catalog plus a reference to "Map X". Clicking on that term you'd see a map showing where the coin was issued. To get an overview of the complexity of the
German medieval coinage try clicking the labels at the top of the page:
maps, states, rulers,
denominations,
types.
The coin photos in the Saurmasche
catalog are exceptionally
poor, so whenever I identify a coin I immediately pull down the
catalog of the
De Wit collection which has excellent photos of most
types, a really fantastic reference
work covering the entire range of
medieval European coinage.