Zilveren piedfort ducaton West-Friesland 1666

With Spain essentially leaving them to their own devices, the Dutch lustily embarked on their Golden Age so that by 1650 the Dutch navy was roughly twice the size of the English and French fleets combined. Dutch shipyards were turning out more than 1,000 vessels a year! Dutch ships and fleets were everywhere to be seen -- in the Pacific, the Mediterranean, the Baltic and Atlantic, along the African coast, and even in the Far East. Smaller versions of coins such as this thereby gained worldwide distribution. How envious the English and other rivals must have been when coming across a massive, and valuable, coin such as this double!

Ex Irving Goodman Collection; Ex-J. Schulman auction 241, Feb. 1966, lot 145. This is the actual coin pictured in Davenport.