Recently a group of seven dies appeared on the market. Four of the dies form a group that produced fantasy transport tokens sometime between 1967 and 1990. Two dies produced a fantasy transport token sometime between 1990 and 2016. The final die was used to produce a previously unrecognised fantasy tobacco plantation token from the Dutch East Indies. Each die is illustrated (50%) and a separate image of the die face is shown along with a mirrored image and a specimen of the token (100%).
Author: BNS Blog Coordinator
Letters of John Lindsay of Cork Regarding the Scottish Coinage – David Rampling
The inclusion of personal letters in books once owned by notable numismatists can provide insights into former views on a coinage. The four letters reproduced in this article were written by the noted Irish numismatist John Lindsay and inserted in two copies of Lindsay’s A View of the Coinage of Scotland. They are addressed to the books’ original owners, J. H. Burn and J. B. Greenshields respectively. They illustrate the application of our forebears to elucidating aspects of the Scottish coinage.
The First Issue Shilling of Nicholas Briot’s Hammered Coinage of 1638-39 – Bob Thomas
For many years it has been assumed there were only two examples of Briot’s First Hammered Issue shilling (S2862). The first known was the British Museum specimen bought in 1825 although no details of the purchase are known. The second dates back at least to the collection of Grant R Francis in around 1918 and it was recently sold as part of the Hulett collection. In 2010 an unrecognised example appeared in an Auction in USA and later, still unrecognised, in the trays of an American dealer at Coinex 2016 when it was bought by a collector who has since sold it to the author of this note. All three are die duplicates.
JONATHAN RASHLEIGH, 1820-1905 – Hugh Pagan
This note sets out what is known about the life and coin collecting career of Jonathan Rashleigh (1820-1905), and draws attention to the fact that the evidence for his acquisitions of coins in the sale room provided by the 1909 Sotheby auction catalogue of the Rashleigh family collection can be supplemented by the presence of Rashleigh’s own name as a purchaser in marked copies of the catalogues of other coin auction sales dating from the late 1840s onwards.
A London Street-name on a late Anglo-Saxon Penny – Richard Ambrose and Rory Naismith
The late Anglo-Saxon coinage minted between the early 970s and the Norman Conquest of 1066 is one of the most extensively studied portions of medieval English currency. Even so, new surprises continue to emerge. One such is a Harold I penny from a recent auction which presents, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first known instance of a street-name on Anglo-Saxon coinage. The occurrence of one street name opens up the possibility that certain other puzzling mint-signatures could reflect streets or districts within larger centres rather than separate locations.
A quarter-noble assigned to the Trefoil Issue of Henry VI re-examined – David Guest
In BNJ 2017 Martyn Frederickson published a quarter-noble of Henry VI that he tentatively assigned to the Trefoil Issue, an issue of which no quarter-nobles were previously known. A reverse die duplicate of the Frederickson coin appeared for sale in a provincial auction in 2018 and prompted the following re-examination of the attribution.
A Third Obverse Die for Dovey Furnace Threepences – – D. I. Greenhalgh
A recently discovered Charles I threepence of the Dovey Furnace mint from a previously unrecorded obverse die and known reverse die. The coin having been over-struck on a flan previously struck as a sixpence also appearing to come from the Dovey Furnace mint.
A Rare “Cut Half” Rescued from a Leicestershire Field: Henry III, Class 1a – Continental Imitation – Robert Page
A coin recently spotted on a popular online auction site has been identified as a very rare continental imitation of a Henry III class 1a long cross penny. It was a Leicestershire metal detecting find and is a “cut half” which originated from the German town of Blomberg in Westphalia. It is not surprising that this continental imitation has been found in Leicestershire as the county had flourishing cloth and wool industries in the first half of the 13th century, and would have been involved in trade with the continent.
A Small Parcel of Coins from the Oulton, Staffordshire Hoard of 1795 (CCH 266) – An Australian Connection – Steve Green
In 1795 a large hoard of over 1000 coins of Edward the Confessor and William I was unearthed in the orchard of Mr Shelley at Oulton, Staffordshire. Very little is known about the hoard other than there are no known Harold II coins and the William I coins are limited to BMC i and ii. P.H. Robinson contributed two articles to the Journal, the first in British Numismatic Journal Volume XXXVIII (1969), pp 24-30, The Stafford (1800) and Oulton (1795) Hoards and the second to the Miscellania section of Volume XLIX (1979). A small parcel of coins from the Oulton hoard which have been in the hands of the Shelley family since the 18th century has recently come to auction in Australia where members of the family have lived since the 1860’s. This parcel doubles the number of proven coins from the hoard.
Ceolbald of Northumbria: a new look at an old moneyer – Arthur Gran
A moneyer by the name of Eotberht was proposed in Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles, volume 68, as a new moneyer for the Northumbrian king Æethelred I. Another coin has now come to light on the Portable Antiquities Scheme which helps to shed some light on the identification of this “new” moneyer. From examination of the images and review of the die characteristics, it appears that Eotberht is not a new moneyer at all, but rather seems likely to be a new spelling for a known moneyer, Ceolbald. This article reviews some the coinage of Ceolbald and tries to draw some conclusions based on the available data. The coins of Ceolbald are discussed, along with some commentary on the rare “double obverse” coin of Æethelred I, which fits into this grouping and is also presumably a Ceolbald issue.
