Extremely rare Danzig shilling of Sigismund II Augustus from the 1549 vintage as described by Kopicki, with a mistakenly struck date.
We are not afraid to use the word UNIQUE, because how else to call the only piece of an extremely rare variety.
The coin with the POLONI variant is known only from the famous Zamoyski collection, albeit lost and only available so far in engravings.
In Edmund Kopicki's catalog, the rarity is R* which means ONE known piece along with an amateur price(c.a.).
The only piece available on the collector's market!
A coin that by all means is a museum grade item and definitely for connoisseurs of the greatest rarity of royal Polish coins.
The opportunity to purchase such a unique coin may not be repeated for many years to come.
The only chance to acquire such a UNIQUE coin.
Highly recommended!
Obverse: Eagle with head and sword to the left
SIGIS DEI GRA REX POLONI
Reverse: crowned coat of arms of Gdansk
MONE CIVI GEDANEN 1549
Diameter 20 mm, weight 0.83 g
In 1995 in the Gdańsk Numismatic Notebooks (No. 20) was presented a unique shellac from the year 1549, but with a different legend than the presented item, SIGIS DEI GRA REX POLO. The author of the article, Mr. Jacek Tylicki, wrote the following about the issue: "The 1549 Gdansk shellac, the obverse of which was struck by mistake with the stamp of Sigismund the Old, who died a year earlier, appeared in the literature thanks to Kazimierz Stronczynski. The author recognized it as having been minted on the account of the tenant Fischer, along with the issues of 1546 and 1547, which had been previously written about by the German scholars of Danzig numismatics, Vossberg and Bahrfeldt.
However, a unique specimen of this numismat, perhaps the same one mentioned by Stronczynski, was located only by Marian Gumowski; it was in Warsaw in the Zamoyski Ordynacja collection. Mentions of the shilling were included in two important publications by the distinguished numismatist, but his illustration of the now unknown coin in the form of a pencil rubbing was only included in the same author's "Mint of Gdańsk," which finally, after many wrangles, appeared in print in 1990. Gumowski in 1960 described the object as unique; such a classification of rarity was also repeated in his section by Edmund Kopicki. The most recent detailed catalog of Polish coins of the period of the last Jagiellons only mentions the former existence of the shekel.
In one of the smaller private numismatic collections in Pomerania, there is a relatively well-preserved piece of the coin in question, with dimensions typical for this value (ø 20 mm). However, it differs from the shekel known from the Zamoyski collection by the obverse legend: on that one it read SIGIS DEI GRA REX POLONI, on the discussed coin the inscription ends with the abbreviation POLO. The reverse legend is identical, but this side of the shilling, too, shows a variation in the stamp compared to the lost specimen: the date numerals are much more narrowly spaced on it. This fact makes less likely Janusz Kurpiewski's suggestion that the 1549 Sigismund I shilling was created by mistake, by reversing the numeral 6 in the date.
Indeed, the repetition twice in one year of the same mistake in engraving is unlikely; however, even if it had happened, coins from two separate stamps would probably have survived more than just one piece each."
