Flanders Groot upcycled to Mary Groat!

[Chris Perkins 223]

I found this very interesting today.

This came with a load of other coins and had a label stating it was a Philip and Mary Groat with portrait of Mary only. I thought nothing of it at first because it's not in great condition, but on closer inspection the shield and cross looked wrong. On even closer inspection the legends also looked wrong - what's left of them. In fact, for a P&M groat they are totally wrong. It took me quite a while doing detective work (hammered aren't my thing really), trying to work out what it says after the very clear 'PHILIP' and on the back between the arms of the cross. There are a lot of tooling marks on the shield and the faint bust of Mary. As my eyes tuned-in better to the writing style of those days it gradually became clearer with a lot of googling that the reverse actually reads ...NOME DNI BENEDICTVM, which led me in a French direction and eventually helped decipher the obverse which instead of reading PHILIP Z MARIA, actually reads PHILIPP DEI G D BVRG Z COM FLAND.... It's Philip Duke of Burgundy (1384 - 1404) and the coin is a Flanders Groot (groat) which should look like the coin posted in the comments.

Someone at some stage, at least 150 years later and for whatever reason, has filed off what should be on the obverse (a lion with a flag) and has replaced it with a scratched out effigy of Mary in order to masquerade it as an English groat. That's a lot of effort to go to on a piece of silver that would have probably been readily accepted as cash at the time in its original form! Why?

[Chris Perkins 223]

And this is what the original Flanders Groot botdrager should look like.

[Matteo95 120]

curious find Chris ...the scratches looks quite recent being not toned but maybe is the light ..

Edited November 28, 2016 by Matteo95

[HistoricCoinage 115]

Very interesting!

[Chris Perkins 223]

Those were the best pics I took out of a few. They show the Mary bust best, but they do look old (the tooling).