Old provincial coins

The provincial coinage

In addition to the Kingdom coins of the Netherlands there is also another collecting area available, namely the provincial minting. This collection area contains an interesting history of the birth and decline of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. Included are both the Spanish era with King Philip the Second, the Count of Alva up to and including the French invasion in 1795 which was led by the French Napoleon Bonaparte took place. The coins were issued by different provinces, and each province has its own design given to coinage. In this blog, you will read about the origin of the coins, the different provinces, and the different coin values that were issued under the leadership of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.

Provincial or national?

Many collectors are familiar with the duiten, oords or 2 penny coins. These are the coins issued by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The currency at that time, as until 2002, was the guilder, a name that owes its origin to the Florentine gold guilder. What is unique is that the guilder in the seven provinces was partly designed and minted by the provinces themselves, but was finally fixed at the national level. This minting was therefore the same for each province, and the minting was composed mainly of the following coins:

• Penny or half dime;
• Duit;
• Oord or two duitstuk;
• The silver penny;
• The silver two penny;
• The silver shilling or sixpence;
• The silver half guilder or ten nickels;
• The silver guilder;
• The silver half ducat;
• The silver daalder;
• The silver ducat;
• The silver 3 guilder;
• The golden ducat;
• The gold seven guilder piece;
• The gold fourteen guilder piece.

Each province was free to mint its own coins, as long as they did meet some requirements such as size or material. This was so that, for example, the two-penny coins from Zeelandia would be worth as much as those from Holland. In the Republic, coins were minted for circulation in the following provinces:

• Utrecht (First CIV. TRAJECTUM, later STAD UTRECHT);
• Holland (HOLLANDIA);
• Zeeland (ZEELANDIA);
• West Friesland (WEST FRISIA)
• Friesland (FRISIA);
• Gelderland (GELRIA);
• Overijssel (First TRASISVLANIA, later OVERIJSSEL);
• Groningen (GRONINGEN ET OMMELANDE).

In addition, in Kampen, Zwolle, Zutphen and Reckheim (now Rekem) also minted coins. These coins were available in smaller runs and not all mints existed until the end of the eighteenth century.

Because coins were minted in many different places, the quality had to be monitored in the various mints and, through the use of a "coin box," the mints had to hand over specimens for inspection. The government of the Republic naturally wanted the merchant from the province of Friesland to be able to assume that the money from Utrecht was worth just as much, or in other words that confidence in the currency was established.

Southern Netherlands

The southern Netherlands had long been under Spanish rule, and then under the Habsburg double monarchy (Austria). The southern Netherlands had a different payment system than the seven provinces. These were mainly the liard, daalers, patagons, sovereign and dukaton. The southern Netherlands were under the Habsburg double monarchy under the rule of Maria Teresa, who is also known from the Maria Theresa Thalers. 

The design

Each province had its own design for the coinage, this to represent its position in the Republic as well. Many of the arms used are still the same, the lion in the water on the Zeelandia (Zeeland) deuces is still on the provincial flag of Zeeland. Most of the arms of the Provinces bear a lion, representing the firmness and strength of the Dutch Republic.

In the seventeenth and partly in the eighteenth century most coins were hammered, a coin plate was placed on a stamping block and the other side of the coin was applied by hitting it with a hammer. As a result, the coins were not always well centered and this can be clearly seen, for example, on the seventeenth-century roe of Holland. So the disadvantage of this method was that the coins were not all centered, moreover it took a lot of time to mint larger numbers.

By the eighteenth century, the use of a screw press had become popular. A screw press made it possible, by building up force on a small area, to strike coins on a larger scale that were of higher quality than their hammered predecessors of the seventeenth century. The advantage of a screw press was that the force applied to the coin plate was less intense than hammering, and therefore it was less common for the coin plates to crack during the minting of new money.

Mint masters and mint master marks.

Each mint master had a personal weapon and this coat of arms was again incorporated into the stamps used to mint coins. These coats of arms are not always in the same place on the coin, but they are usually found on the side of the year.

By the way, the tradition of mintmaster marks is very old, but it is still applied even today. Even the Dutch euro coins still have both the mint mark of the State Mint displayed as the mintmaster's mint mark.

The end of the system

Even after the creation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, provincial coins remained in circulation. Provincial coins were not sanitized until 1850, and in Netherlands East Indies the duit did not disappear until the late nineteenth century. Today, the coinage of the Republic is still present in the Dutch vocabulary, think of the saying "a duit in the bag."

Forgeries

Counterfeiting coins is almost as old as coinage itself, and also occurred in the Republic. These were often forgers who counterfeited a coin to issue at a market, for example, but Dutch money was also counterfeited outside the Netherlands. For example, a large number of two-penny coins were counterfeited in Birmingham, United Kingdom, which are still in some collections today because of their interesting history.

Counterfeiting was not without risk, by the way, so in the eighteenth century there were severe penalties for counterfeiting.

Buy provincial coins

At David-Coin, you can original provincial coins of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, from half dimes to gold fourteen guilder coins. David-Coin thus offers a diverse range of different values and qualities: use the filters on the left side of the pages to get a selection with the desired characteristics.

Selling provincial coins?

Do you have your own provincial or other old coins or bills lying around, and want to sell them? You can contact David-Coin make an appointment For a no-obligation valuation of your coins and/or banknotes.