1½ Lira - Franz II : Republic of Venice (Italian states)

[Dave8472]

Back to one of my old sites this morning, ground was a bit hard but well flat, just the one much corroded green that I could see was a foreigner, or so I thought…

Wish I had got a picture of it to start with, on partial cleaning I could see it matched a 1 ½ Lira of Franz II, Republic of Venice (Italian states), issue year 1802. However this is supposed to be a silver coin. When I looked it up I saw it was an extremely debased silver issue of just 0.250, that explained it. Was a difficult coin to restore with that in mind, several goes in citric acid were needed and some aggressive scrubbing. I had no choice but to finish off with wire wool !!! The end result has come out far better than I had expected, you would be surprised how green and corroded it initially was, trust me, was well bad.

So my average morning turned out to be super cool with another unusual find for my collection. Thanks for looking

Pasture : Field 1 : Equinox 800

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces62067.html

Dave

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[Rank81]

Lovely find, not seen one of those before . Nice big silver.

[swansea jack]

That's a new one on me, looks like a good clean up job to me.

[sweepstick47]

A remarkable job on the cleaning Dave, it's come-up a treat