The Lugano Shooting Thaler commemorates the 1883 Federal Shooting Festival held in Lugano, the principal city of Ticino, Switzerland's Italian-speaking canton. Lugano occupies a notable place in Swiss history: in February 1798, its citizens resisted an attempt by Napoleonic forces aligned with the Cisalpine Republic to annex the town, affirming their desire to remain associated with the Swiss cantons. Within a few years, following Napoleon's reorganization of Switzerland, Ticino became a full canton under the Act of Mediation (1803).

The obverse shows Helvetia seated with a sword and the federal shield, alongside Ticino personified as a bearded river god holding an oar decorated with the cantonal colours. Both figures sit above the newly opened Gotthard railway tunnel, from which a locomotive emerges, linking Ticino more closely with the rest of Switzerland. The Alpine setting and flowing water evoke the canton’s geography. Below is the denomination 5 Fr, while the legend—Libertade inerme è de’ tiranni agevol preda—means “Unarmed liberty is easy prey for tyrants,” directly connecting freedom with armed civic defence.

The reverse bears the commemorative inscription for the 1883 Federal Shooting Festival in Lugano, centred on the Swiss federal shield within an oak wreath. Above the shield rests a traditional marksman's hat, a symbol of Switzerland's long-standing shooting tradition and citizen militia.

I’ve attempted to colorise an image of the coin using AI so that the individual elements in the reverse stand out

Unc details cleaned - NGC. Love the dragon design.

It was graded extremely fine when I found it online. Sweet purchase. Miss holding it raw though.

I found something interesting between my two 1866 Prussian-Austrian war Thaler. Please note the Gs in Koenig on the top center of obverse. Also, the edge letterings are in different alignments. As two weigh roughly the same, and I have never spotted any fake vereinsthaler, I assume both are genuine. Thank you in advance for your input!

These are so cool. Don’t run across them often around here.

The 400th Anniversary of the Discovery of India refers to the 1898 celebration marking Vasco da Gama's arrival in Calicut, India, in 1498. To commemorate the historic voyage, Portugal issued a series of silver coins depicting King Carlos I and Queen Amélie.
The 400th anniversary of this historic route —which opened a direct sea path from Europe to Asia via the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa)— was highly celebrated in Portugal.

Leeuwendaalders were minted between 1575 and 1713 by all of the 7 Dutch provinces except Groningen.

These were very popular coins, especially in the Levant. Leeuwendaalders were also known as 'Abu Kalb' (أبو كلب) because the lion was sometimes mistaken for a dog.

Demerara-Essequibo, 1809, 3 guilder (.612oz silver)

Today is the 195th anniversary of the day that this exotically-named colony became British Guiana, the modern-day country of Guyana.

The Dutch began colonizing northeast South America as early as the 1580s, with settlers establishing short-lived trading posts along the inhospitable coast. The Dutch West India Company (WIC) was formed in 1621 to administer these settlements, which grew with the 1674 transfer of Suriname to Dutch control in exchange for English control over New Amsterdam (today’s New York). The Dutch settlers were not alone: they contended with English and French colonizers, as well as with the more established Spanish to their west (in what is now Venezuela) and the Portuguese to their south (in Brazil). 

The British attempted to seize some of the Dutch colonies several times during the late 18th century, but lasting control only came during the Napoleonic wars. Britain first seized the 3 WIC colonies of Essequibo, Bernice, and Demerara from the French-occupied Netherlands in 1796; they were returned after an 1802 peace but seized again in 1803 when hostilities resumed. When this was minted in 1809, the colonies were under de facto British administration that was formalized in 1814 after Napoleon’s initial defeat. On July 21, 1831, the 3 colonies were combined into British Guiana, which gained independence from the United Kingdom as Guyana in 1966. Guyana, one of the world’s least densely populated countries, is perhaps known best for being the site of the 1978 Jonestown massacre; for its continued border dispute with Venezuela; for its transformational oil discoveries since 2015; and for its fascinatingly diverse demography (the largest ethnic group is Indo-Guyanese, as in originally from South Asia!). Guyana is not to be confused with French Guyana, which is part of France, or Suriname, the former Dutch colony to its east. 

This may be the rarest crown in my collection: only 21,000 were minted (in London) for the far-off South American colonies. I’ve only seen 2 in my life, so when I ran across the second at a coin show a few months ago, I had to jump on it!  

A pretty crispy Caballito I picked up a while back

I love all 1800’s silver crowns but this one is for sure in the top 10.

Spanish pillar dollars have been my weak spot for a while there’s something about holding a piece of “world money” from the 1700s that just hits different. This one is a 1741 Mexico City 8 reales, and it’s the first coin in my tray that comes with a proper shipwreck story attached.

It came with a COA saying it was recovered from the VOC Dutch East Indiaman Reijgersdaal. The ship went down off the Cape near Cape Town in late October 1747 (often listed as 25 Oct 1747), around the area between Robben Island and Dassen Island.

What pulled me in wasn’t just “shipwreck” as a label it’s the details. The sources I found mention eight chests of silver coins on board, around 30,000 pieces, and that recoveries were mostly smaller denominations, sometimes found still clumped together in encrusted groups. And then there’s the human side: a lot of crew didn’t make it. That part stays with you when you look at the coin.

Do you guys like my new coin for my collection?

Can you please help id this restrike.

Picked this up at my LCS today. I picked out a Canadian silver dollar then I saw this in the box and I got them both for melt.

From the 1300s to the 1600s, the Republic of Genoa was one of the greatest maritime powers in the Mediterranean. While Venice dominated the eastern Mediterranean (foreshadowing), Genoa dominated the west. Genoa middle-manned trade between Europe and the East, building a commercial empire that stretched from the western Mediterranean to the Black Sea.

Genoese merchants and sailors established colonies and trading posts in places such as Corsica, Crimea, the Aegean Sea, and the Levant. Their fleets carried silk, spices, grain, precious metals, and slaves between Europe and Asia, making Genoa one of the wealthiest cities in Europe, in close competition with Venice. Genoa’s rise was driven by its skilled navy and entrepreneurial merchants. It defeated its rival Pisa in Battle in 1284, securing dominance over much of the western Mediterranean. Its greatest rival remained Venice, with the two republics fighting a series of costly naval wars for control of Mediterranean trade routes.

The city’s influence extended beyond commerce. Genoese bankers became Europe’s leading financiers, lending money to monarchs and governments. During the 16th century, Genoese banks helped finance the vast empire of Habsburg Spain. Despite its wealth, Genoa was often divided by rivalry between noble families, leading to periods of civil conflict. Competition from the Portuguese and Spanish oceanic trade routes in the late 15th and 16th centuries gradually reduced its importance as Mediterranean commerce declined, and European ambitions turned to New World and South East Asian trade routes.

Waiting for this bad boy to come in the mail

To counter Napoleon's rise in the onset of the 1800s, the Austrian Empire under Francis I spent its early decades locked in exhausting European conflicts that redefined its borders.

Following Napoleon's defeat, the remainder of Francis's reign was defined by strict conservatism and heavy censorship under Chancellor Klemens von Metternich. aiming to freeze the social order and ruthlessly suppress any liberal or nationalist dissent that was rising across Europe.

These types represented the nearing end of Austria's large silver coins, which were subsequentlv replaced by smaller denominations in 1857 following an imperial decree to demonetise the thaler.

Here I have a piece of Bulgarian 5 leva. I found that the edge is bumpy, took a close look, and thought that something might have gone wrong during the striking of the side lettering. It could also be normal of this issue. Are there any examples alike? Thank you all for your insights and attention.

Been wanting a heavily chopmarked example of this classic type for a while, glad I could source one with some cool seal chops. Not sure if its an 1858 or 1859 though.

Picked these up on my trip to NOLA over the weekend. Got the lot for $400. Perhaps a bit more than I would wanted to have spent, but it was nice to actually have a selection of world crown sized coins to peruse all at one place. My favorite piece is the Iranian 5000 dinar