Owner Comments:
References
References are extremely important! You should always buy at least one book about a series before diving too deeply into it. You’ll find that as you progress in a series, you’ll naturally tend to buy a couple of other references as well. For most collectors of foreign (non-US) coins, that first book usually tends to be the Standard Catalogue of World Coins, published by Krause (you’ll also often people refer to it as “Krause”). This enormous book is divided up into several volumes, one for each century. It is not exhaustive, but lists almost every type and major variety, along with pertinent information such as weight, composition, and size. It has photographs for most series, as well as pricing data. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, however, the pricing data is not the most reliable, especially for very rare coins which don’t trade often.
As you get deeper into collecting Moroccan coinage (especially focused on the years of French influence, as I do in this set), there are a few other references which emerge as valuable:
Eustache, Daniel. Corpus des Monnaies Alawites. 3 volumes, 1984, published by the Bank of al-Maghreb in Rabat (the national bank of Morocco). This is by far the most exhaustive treatment of the coinage of this era, and describes the coins of the Alawite dynasty (the current ruling dynasty of Morocco, since 1666). This book goes a bit further back than my collection, but is incredibly important.
Lecompte, Jean. Monnaies et Jetons des Colonies Francaises. Editions Victor Gadoury. This is one volume of a wide ranging series describing the coins of France – this volume focuses on the colonial and protectorate issues, and includes a section on tokens issued in those provinces. While this is more general of a reference than Eustace, it is more in-depth than Krause. A very valuable reference for the sole fact that PCGS (and sometimes NGC) will designate a coin with it’s Lecompte number instead of it’s Krause number. Knowing what the label is referencing will help you figure out what the coin actually is (assuming they got it right….. not always the best assumption).
Sanchez-Giron. Monedas de Marruecos. 3rd edition. The first edition is good, but incomplete. The second edition was never published, as far as I can tell (Eustache published around the time the second edition was supposed to come out, causing Sanchez-Giron to re-evaluate and revise for a 3rd edition.) Eustache is the ultimate scholarly treatment of the subject of Moroccan coins, Krause and Lecompte serve more as a survey of the material; Sanchez-Giron is enjoyable because it is written by a collector, for collectors, from a collector’s perspective. It is quite thorough, and focuses solely on the machine struck coinage. There are also pictures of rare and unique patterns not listed in Krause. The book begins in AH1279 (1879 AD) through the end of the French Protectorate in 1956.
The biggest downside to all of these books is that they are in other languages…. Krause is in English, but there really isn’t much text or description so it isn’t important. Eustache and Lecompte are both in French, and Sanchez-Giron is in Spanish. It makes sense if you think about it – the French influence lends itself to study in that language, and Spain was a chief rival in the Moroccan conquest (and right across the Straights of Gibraltar). However, I would appreciate a detailed look at Moroccan coinage in English! Guess I’ll have to write it myself….
The coin for this entry is a stellar MS-66 example. It is the single highest graded for the date, and fully earns that position. Luster shines across the surface, and gorgeous multicolored toning makes this coin pop, especially on the reverse. You can see, comparing this coin to the Berlin mintage, the arrowheads here face inwards, and are in a different style (they are also at different angles in relation to the Seal of Solomon on both sides). I have chosen to rotate the images to align the Seal of Solomon in the proper orientation, and the devices fall where they may. Krause shows the images differently, but I find this more aesthetically pleasing.