Religious medallion?

[Raven69]

I found this medallion while wading in a local river. It is about the size of a US half dollar.

I am finding it difficult finding anything on the net relating to the writing on the back, not sure if it is from a prayer or not?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks ;-)

 

[Aarong81]

I've done some searching and the reverse appears to look like a 1927 British Proof Silver Crown coin.

Here is an example of that...
http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6107/6330079118_f2025c9a16_z.jpg
And I overlayed that with yours and it shows both similarity and several major differences but the crown appears to be a close copy or possibly related to the same king, George V.
http://picasion.com/pic62/54868ae3a34c0adf2b8fb850ea83a861.gif
I'll look a bit more into it but I don't have too much time right now. GL, Hope you find out what it is. I believe someone took a coin and added the text to it. I can see right facing head on the obverse which narrows down the possibilities by a lot but I couldn't find a close match to the obverse yet.

On second thought, The obverse and revers are oriented the same. I think most coins would be flipped upside down but I don't know if thats true for other countries. That could be a telling clue if its a coin or not.

 

[Raven69]

Thanks for the info Aarong81,

I hadn't noticed the head on the obverse until you pointed it out. I believe it is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth ii from the 1950/60's.

The orientation of the obverse and reverse is correct. I have had a good look for any commonwealth coins that have the same patterns on the obverse/reverse, but can't find a match.

Will keep searching.

Thank again,

Mark

 

[ojm bc]

n/t

 

[Raven69]

The writing looks to have be engraved into the metal.

 

[Aarong81]

With the letters going off the edge of the coin and being pretty uniform I would say it looks like it was stamped. Why engrave it and not fit your engraving on the coin? Looks like whatever stamped it was larger than the coin.

What I was saying about the orientation, All US coins have a reverse that is upside down compared to the obverse. So if you drill a hole above the head on the obverse it will be at the bottom on the reverse side. Your coin/medallion is not like this, the hole is at the top on both obverse and reverse. I don't have any british coins or any non-US coins to see if they are the same as I'm used to seeing.

 

[Aarong81]

There are only 3 words that are stamped on this medal, "Helpless" "Ginius" & "but". It appears to be latin and in that order translates to "Helpless virgin house". The word 'helpless' is a direct translation, and the order I have no idea but that order makes as much sense as any other. Perhaps it could be "House (of the) helpless virgin"? But the first order also indicates the same "(the) Helpless virgin house".
I have not found any helpful search results using this translation, even when using the latin spelling.

I used google translate and the word 'helpless' translated to 'helpless' PROBABLY because it didn't recognize it as a latin word. So it may not be latin. When searching google it wants to correct it to english and change ginius to genius. It could be possible that whoever designed the stamp intended to spell genius and mispelled it, but thats quite a bit of trouble to go through just to spell it wrong.

 

[Raven69]

You are spot on Aarong81.

I got the same translation, like you finding any useful reference is difficult.
The orientation of the obverse and revers is correct for English/ Australian coins.

I was thinking stamped for the lettering, the coin is quite corroded and some of the lettering looks less than perfect then if it were stamped. It's a tuff call, if it were stamped so close to the edge I would have expected some distortion to the edge.
But as you point out why engrave it that way?

Anyway, thank you for the help.

HH

 

[Aarong81]

I just noticed the ring on it looks to have a soldered seam. It could just be that the seam is not visible in the pics but would be a coincident that both pics show it with no seam. If it were cheaply made it would not be soldered.

 

[Raven69]

You are right again, the ring is soldered.

Thats why I assumed it was a medallion when I saw the soldered ring. It makes it all the more intriguing that someone went to some trouble to alter/ modify a coin.


HH

 

[Bayoutalker]

http://books.google.com/books?id=cQUOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA293&lpg=PA293&dq=helpless+ginius&source=bl&ots=8ENLsQMAgx&sig=juNf_SEPmCZw3xNZ3eNJ5895TW8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=imzoUN7aMOT62QXFqIDQBQ&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=helpless%20ginius&f=false

I found this reference when I searched for "helpless ginius". Maybe it is related???