TOKEN

A silver piedfort striking of the coin known as a blanc au léopard sous couronne, second type, struck by King Edward III as Duke of Aquitaine, probably in the mid 1350s.

Piedforts are unusual objects and their actual purpose has never been clearly established. In most cases, they are objects struck from the dies of a currency coin, but using a blank of unusual thickness and weight. However, the weights of surviving piedforts do not seem to relate to the weights of the currency coins - they are never multiples of these. This is the most obvious feature that sets them apart from usable currency coins and differentiates than from a later European phenomenon (roughly in the 16th-18th centuries) of using the same dies to strike accurate multiples. In this case, the weight of the currency coin was something around 1.7g, but the piedfort weighs 6.67g.

The first piedforts are known from the later 13th century from England, France and other principalities in the region. They continued to be produced into the 16th century. (At the French royal mints their production survived much longer - into the 18th century - and they were then revived in the 19th century, but this was a distinct and local phenomenon.) Although all individual piedforts are rare, they are relatively common as a phenomenon in the coinage of Aquitaine in the 14th century. The specific coin involved here exists in at least 23 versions, and piedfort strikings of two of these are known. This example provides a third. These other piedforts weigh 7.85g and 6.12g.

A number of ideas have been put forward to explain piedforts. It is very unlikely that they are pattern (experimental) coins, since they are made with currency dies (in some cases the same die has been identified used both on normal coins and a piedfort). Nor is it likely that they were created as guides for mint workers. Perhaps the likeliest idea is that they were made for the use of important officials, who might utilise them as reckoning counters. This would certainly account for them turning up far from home and away from any context of currency. In the case of Aquitaine, it was normal in the 14th century for Englishmen to serve as officials there, as they were more loyal to the king and less affected by the complicated local rivalries of the duchy.

Numismatic data

No numismatic data has been recorded for this coin yet.