The assemblage of coins found in the Old Town district of Lublin (6a, Wincentego Pola St., presently known as Archidiakońska St.) on 1 July 1981 consists of 21 false groschen of Sigismund III Vasa (1587–1632) and 2 fragments of unspecified coins. As a result of the research analysis, it has been found that the coins were minted in tin-coated copper. Despite the fact that the dates are decipherable only on 10 groschen coins, it may be inferred from the identity of the coin dies that 15 of them (71.4%) bear the year 1608, while 5 (23.8%) – 1607. No date has been determined for only one coin. The groschen of 1607, struck with the use of one pair of coin dies, imitate the bust / eagle type. This particular variation tends to prevail also among the pieces with the date 1608 (13 out of a total number of 15 pieces), which had been coined with the use of two pairs of dies. 1 groschen with a bust and 2 groschen with a crown image had been struck by means of some other coin dies. The fact that the forged coins were found at the site of the former townhouse owned by the mayor Jan Szembek (since 1608) allows us to presume that they may have been deposited there as a result of some administrative action taken against the illegal practice. Beginning from the early decades of the 17th century, conditions for the growth of such practices had been created and fuelled by the atmosphere of the increasing economic crisis and the resulting perturbations spreading across the monetary markets of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

ABSTRACT:

The coins of Sigismund III Vasa (1587–1632) were one of the most numerous foreign specimens to be found all over the Ottoman Empire. They were part of the coin circulation in the Bulgarian lands at the end of the 16th and in the first half of the 17th century. The Sigismund’s coins were preferred also as hoarding issues and that is why they are often presented in coin hoards from that time. The aim of this study is to present the variety of denominations of the ruler found in the region of Varna and to explain their significance and the role in the coin circulation in the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th century.