JeandAcre

Sure enough, @expat, you nailed it!  A solid example, too; you get extra points for detail on all three faces.  ...The strikes on these aren't awful, but run to being less than inspired.

I don't have anything in print for these.  But here's mine, an eventual (......) upgrade to one that's orders of magnitude homelier than yours. 

(Instant edit:) It's cool how Hetoum's reign is an exact match, year to year, to Louis IX's.  --Rats, there's no mention in my abrifged translation of Joinville's 'Chronicle' (really a memoir), but I'm sure if you went deeper, you'd find some connection or other.

Yesss!  To @idesofmarch01's original point, when the line gets crossed between mere stylization of a motif, and abstraction for its own sake, you've got the essence of what the earlier phases of Picasso and Braque were about.  You're well beyond 'naive realism;' this stuff is following its own, independent esthetic.

Yow, @Edessa.  I'm used to production values for German coins as of the 11th century, but not as late as this!  And Rudolf von Habsburg, no less.  You have to wonder if the sloppy strikes were largely a symptom of how high the original mintages were.  ...A little like how, in the 18th century, when printing really starts to accelerate, the books often replace the copperplates of the 17th century with frankly shoddy woodcuts. 

Yep, you nailed it again, @Hrefn; the piercings effectively, and seamlessly add a new dimension to the coin's immediate historical context.  @Romismatist, Kluge confirms all you said, apart from attributing it to as far away (...not) as Lüneburg (239).

In light of both your points on coins' careers after leaving the mint, especially @Romismatist about peck marks, here's another of my, increasingly shameless reposts.  AEthelred penny, Dreng in Lincoln.  Even the Scandinavian moneyer's name, from a major town of the Danelaw (heavily settled by Vikings for over a century), failed to assuage the skepticism of the first-generation Dane who presumably got it as Danegeld.  ...I love peck marks, but not so much when they take over the entire coin!  

@John Conduitt, I can bet money I don't have that it still cost ...money I don't have!  Congratulations are in order.  Heck; you've got most of his name.

That's an inspired adaptation of a fantastic coin.

I haven't evolved to doing anything along these lines, but the Chinonais /Bleso-Chartrain profiles of feudal France invite comparison both to Celtic and Picasso. 

Berry.  Lordship of Celles.  Robert I, 1178-1189.

Rev. +ROB[' D]E CELE.  Duplessy 611.

"Not a pretty coin, but an eloquent testimony to desperate times."

Thanks, @Hrefn, for nailing the initial premise with a mallet, in this entirely, very coolly different context.

Huge props, @expat and @JAZ Numismatics, for your brilliant forays into this bog!  Quiet, sustained chuckling ensues.

No denying it, if you’re really into the kind of medieval coins that confirm every negative esthetic stereotype of the genre, that gets to be its own pathology.  
(Right, at the end, the painting the Joker likes is by Francis Bacon.)

Batman - Partyman (Museum Scene)

This might be most emphatically true in the case of some issues from the later 10th and 11th centuries.  When the sensibility is fully in play, it goes well beyond, for instance, appreciating Carolingian legends for evoking the monumentalism you see on Julio-Claudian and Flavian AE.  By contrast, this is about appreciating an indisputible level of crudity as a viscerally immediate symptom of its own often chaotic milieu.  If the historical significance is really your primary criterion, this synergy between coin and context can approach its own subclass of ‘esthetics.’ Granted, on a more cerebral level than the more usual connotations of the term.
…Just bought this example from @Annes Kabel, from his ebay site.

Heinrich III as German Emperor, 1046-1056.  Denar of Strassburg /Strasbourg.
Obv.  Heinrich crowned, facing; extending into the lower legend.  Legend mostly unstruck; what’s there appears to be blundered.  From a much different example, Kluge renders it [from 8 o’clock:] HEINRICVS [...] IMPR.
Rev.  St. Mary, haloed; facing, as above.  Again from Kluge (and his plate): S[--]CA MARIA.  Kluge 149.
…Right, so the coin has to evoke an issue from the preceding generation.

Robert II, King of Francia 996-1031.  Denier of Laon, coissued with Bp. Adelbéron (977-1030).
Obv. Robert facing[, crowned]; (Duplessy:) ‘ROB FRAN REX et  déformations.’ 
Rev. Adelbéron facing; (Duplessy:) ‘+ADALBERO LAD et déformations.’  Duplessy, Monnaies Royales 8.

…You’re cordially invited to post your ugly coins, from Any time, Anywhere!  You’d get points for getting into why you like them anyway.
 

Really impressive, @Postvmvs --certainly from here!

But only because I can't make myself shut up in time, here's a decidedly tentative alternate  guess about the legends.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_wrestling_with_the_angel#:~:text=Jacob wrestling with the angel or God is described in," (מַלְאָךְ%3A Malakh). 

That might explain the angel grabbing the other guy's thigh.  Granted, the reverse legend would be much less specific. 

(Instant edit: No, I think you were right.  The obverse does look more like the angel supporting the other guy.)

Very cool of you, @Deinomenid, to make this offer.  Sadly, I don't go near Papal coins either ...and at this point it's probably too late to start.

But here's a plug for D'Andrea.  I have their books on coins of the Normans and Staufen, along with v. 14 (Italy) of Medieval European Coinage.  Their listings are often more detailed than in MEC, and they assiduously include citations of other references.  A solid outfit.

Sorry to be this late to this party.  Very illuminating, only starting with @Roman Collector's formidable OP, and @DonnaML's predictable tour de force.  

But it's fun that people have been expanding beyond the Roman contexts.  Props are due @Nerosmyfavorite68 for including an Islamic example, from the Seljuqs of Rum.  The 13th c. CE is pretty early for the Islamic appropriation of the crescent and star motif, but there it is, as a variant, to the left of the (can't keep from going here) Man in the Sun.

...Leading to this remarkably comprehensive and well-documented Wiki article on the evolution of the star and crescent symbol, from the Sumerians all the way to the later Byzantines, with stops conspicuously including the Romans.  Often enough, the star represents a sun.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_and_crescent 

So, why not?  Here's a Sasanian dirham of Hormiizd IV, 579-590 CE, with the motif showing up on the margins of the obverse, and the common variant in the upper reverse field, to either side of the Zoroastrian fire.  Cf. Gobl 200-202.

And my example from the counts of Toulouse for which there are pics.  Raymond V (1148-1194), from the neighboring marquisat of Provence, but still emphasizing his status as count.  Obv. +R. COMES.  Rev. The 'Cross of Toulouse,' already established as the family's coat of arms.  D / V / X / M.  ('Dux Marca'.  In Medieval Latin usage, both terms often connoted a territory on the frontier.)  Duplessy 1604.

@Finn235, I'm not touching the bone-vs.-somebody-else's-dust issue.   

(One thing I still need about Protestantism is that it gives you more latitude to distrust organized religion generally.  Thank you, where that's concerned, no one ever had a monopoly.)

...That 7-leaf clover is on another level entirely.  Call this theology only if you need to.  But in that instance, the attribution and provenance kind of speak for themselves.

@panzerman, this is a, well, typically stunning example (for your stuff) of a fantastic issue. 

As you note, for what's happening dynastically, it's momentous, with repercussions that resonate across Europe over a couple of centuries and change.  ...Right, in the painting, Philip wears the badge of the Order of the Golden Fleece, founded in Burgundy.  It's still around, but as two separate orders, based in Spain and Austria.  Maybe owing in part to the two (eventual) branches of the Habsburgs?  The range of the family's rule is staggering.

But the coin itself is terrific for underscoring how dramatic the historical transition is.  (Right, just starting with cultural and political dimensions.  ...Nope, left out economic ones.)  It's impossible not to believe you know this, but it's cool enough to be worth noting.  The obverse imitates the ones of the English AV nobles, going back to Edward III.  But it's an unapologetically free adaptation; even the carrack updates Edward's cogs. 

Meanwhile, the reverse riffs on the French ecus, also going back to the 14th century.  And, Yow, along with the fantastic Arabic date, the legends actually combine late Gothic and Roman letter forms.  (Thank you, the 'E's and 'B's.)  I can bet money I don't have that I've never seen that before.  Even Henry VII's later AR groats and testoons, with the profiles which, for northern Europe, can only be called precociously Renaissance, are paired with the relentlessly late Gothic lettering that goes back to the early 15th century. 

...Just, Stupendous.  Not making this up: with all the incredible gold you've gotten, nothing has made me sit up in my chair the way this did.  Heartiest congratulations.

This will inevitably be a repost; why I was holding back on posting it.  But this is my first coin apart from cheap, small, and sometimes electrum fractional dinars from Apulia, Sicily and Andalusian Iberia, c.10th -11th centuries CE.  I was thinking that a first gold coin of any more heft than that would have to be of optimal historical significance (...for me).  Along with an initially successful invasion of western Yemen, Kaleb continued Aksum's lucrative trade with South Asia, and had diplomatic relations with Justinian I, at a time when Aksum was considered a major power in the broader eastern Mediterranean world.

Aksum /Axum.  Kaleb, fl. 520-530.  AV, loosely based on the tremisis.  (...Going back to the later 3rd c. CE, when the Greek legends were also much more consistent.  The degradation of the Greek here coincides with the ongoing use of Latin on Byzantine coins.  I doubt that's purely coincidental.)

Obv.  Kaleb crowned, holding what Munro-Hay calls a 'short stick;' two wheat stalks and inner border around.  

(At top:) Ge'ez rendering of 'Kaleb,' in three letters (KLB); called a 'monogram,' but conforming to traditionally unvowelled Afro-semitic practice, apart from being conjoined.

Retrograde Greek, from 4 o'clock: BACILEVS.

Rev.  Kaleb wearing a headcloth.  More retrograde Greek, translated as 'Son of Thezana.'  (Cf. Ezana, the first Christian king of Aksum.)

Munro-Hay Type 95; Hahn, cf. esp. 354.  (Several relatively minor variations.)

@Marsyas Mike, Congratulations on the tetradrachm!  You certainly walked into that with a lot more background knowledge than I had.  It's fun that the countermarks are probably Phoenician.  ...And, elephant in the room time, Very Best of luck with the thankfully minimal crystalization.  Knowing nothing about the technicalities of that, here's hoping there's some safe way of addressing that, even if (eventually?) by a specialist.

...Oh, right, I started this, so you're all owed.  Sorry.  @Deinomenid, the Syracuse AE is Fantastic.  The level of contemporaneity is truly great.  And on a philosopher's budget, he could easily have spent it!

@Anaximander, I've always liked Aeginan staters, but had no idea that the transition to land tortoises was occasioned by an Athenian conquest.  Cool!  RIght, even if Plato wasn't born there, you've got that much more happening in the way of historical context, along with the (also impressive) contemporaneity.

Another solid one, @Phil Anthos.  ...Nope, don't think the technology has advanced quite to that level....

I'm really fuzzy on this period.  When Albinus was co-emperor with Septimius Severus, was Severus (at least) firmly in control of Egypt?  

Yes, the BM is certainly less than foolproof in their attributions.  There's this example among their Ife royal portrait sculpture, which is all dated (?) 14th-15th century.  This corresponds to the range given by every overview of African art I've ever seen, going back to the 1970s.  But this entry even makes reference to the archaeological context.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Af1939-34-1

Then there's this book, going back to 1989, citing comparable archaeological evidence, but this time dating the Ife sculpture (both brass and terra cotta) with this level of naturalism to c. 1000-1200.  On the basis of, Oops, radiocarbon dating.  (See esp. pp. 46 and 61.)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0945802048/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 

Bizarrely, the bibliography includes studies as recent as 2010.  Although mention is made of previous attributions which were even more aggregious, I have to wonder if some people just couldn't handle the idea of this stuff being that much earlier than the Renaissance. 

Huge thanks for this, @Didier Attaix.  (Still waiting for the email to start an account with the the Ancient Artifacts group.  ...Guessing that could mean that actual humans are monitoring it.  What's not to like?)

Except, Yes, your link to Bron's website eventuated in registration, and some email correspondence.  (As it turns out, he's not a member of Numisforums.)

He's been amazingly expansive, never mind magnanimous in his replies.  ...But after a couple of rounds, it's starting to register that it's time to leave off 'wasting the batteries'!

One exception might involve sending him links to your two most recent threads, including this one.

Brilliant.  Just Brilliant.  ...Am I right to think I remember a later Republican denarius commemorating victories over one of the correspondingly earlier kings --also with a camel in the lower field?

...Wishing there were pics of any of my Nabataeans.  All much commoner, earlier types, but including some nice examples.

...Thanks to the wild and crazy new technology they have for reading carbonized manuscripts --even on papyrus. 

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/romans/platos-burial-place-finally-revealed-after-ai-deciphers-ancient-scroll-carbonized-in-mount-vesuvius-eruption 

This had to call for a repost of my prized archaic-style Athenian tetradrachm, magnanimously priced by @CPK, which was the first purchase from the Cabinet.  Earlier than Plato, but not as much so as the papyri in Herculaneum are later.  And with enough honest wear to demonstrate a good interval of circulation.

...If anyone felt moved to post anything more nearly contemporaneous to Plato, it would be fun to see.

@lordmarcovan, you sent me to Wiki for narwhals.  But Yep, there was a European trade in them going back to the Viking Age.  Wish you could stop me: whether owing to false advertising or mere wishful thinking, they were often considered unicorn horns.

I guess my weirdest thing (long gone) had to be a wooden cask, c. 1920's but looking more turn-of-the-century, with a tap at the bottom.  It was for some kind of vanilla extract.  Even with some of the stuff still in it, it was fun to look at, with most of the original paper labels still intact.  I don't remember it being more than two feet high.

...From when I was really low to the ground, we would often summer at an old house on an island in Puget Sound, owned by family friends.  (How old?  The front half eventually collapsed under its own weight.  ...As long as it held up, it was a Seriously fun house!  Staying there was somewhere on a spectrum starting with 'camping.')  The builder had run a still during Prohibition, and the barn across the path to the dock was Stuffed Full of miscellaneous detritus from that.  The current owners really didn't care what we walked off with.  While my big brother had the wit to opt for bottles, some of them likely valuable, I zeroed in on that cask.  My dad probably made me part with it, but it was fun to live with.  

Very cool examples, @KenDorney!  While not quite on bucket-list level, if I ever landed one Becker and one Paduan, I wouldn't argue.

This goes back to some library book I read as a kid, but its take was that Becker's main 'tell' is that his engraving skill actually surpassed a lot of the originals.  To your point, the book said that they were collectible in their own right, but I had no idea that it began so soon. 

...Rats, no luck from Ilisch with your first one.  In this monograph, which is all I know of his work, his format is similar to Kluge, with good, mostly photographic plates on the same page as the text listings.  ...Relative to Dannenberg, that helps when you're like me, and don't know what you're looking for in the first place!

Yowie!  Late-Breaking news flash!  (...Thought this was going to be a day for errands, but there's all week for that.)

This is from Dr. Peter Ilisch (sorry, no umlauts:)  'Die Munzpragung im Herzogtum Niederlothringen.' (Jarboek voor Munt- en Penningkunde; 100 Special: 2014.  Amsterdam: Koningklijk Nederlands Genootschap.)

Section 34; 'Luttich /Liege.'  P. 225, 34.12.  Konrad II, 1027-1039.

Obv.  Diademed profile to right; IMP CONRADVS.  (Using Google Translate from the original German.)

Rev.  Rider reining the horse with his right hand, his left raised.  (From lower left: -S- L [/] A [/] MB [/] T.  

Citing Dannenberg 1998 (without the initial 'S'.)

Here's the article on Lambert, patron saint of Liege, from (sorry, English) Wikipedia.  It's an engaging read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert_of_Maastricht 

...This a Fun one!  Hope you keep us posted on when you starting listing these.

(Edit:) And, Nope, it's not in Kluge, who has an index of mints at the back.