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Hi, I reckon this is an interesting very old coin - my oldest English coin.
It is an Edward III (1327 - 1377) silver penny and comes from the Attenborough Hoard (buried circa 1460 near Nottingham) found in the UK in 1966. It came to me with its original brown paper British Museum packet and Marion Archibalds hand written description. The details were published in 1969 British Numismatic Journal (vol xxxviii) pages 50 to 83. Every one of the 1102 coins found was individually published in the journal, given a number, photographed and described by the British museum. It is also listed in Seabys Catalogue (now Spinks) as No. S1648-51.
The reverse features a cross which was used to cut up these silver pennies into 2 half penny or 4 farthings...a lot were cut up but all in the hoard were complete. The obverse shows a bust of the king.
...a nice old piece of history me thinks. :D
Very very nice. But what the value of it today?
How did you get it? Buy it? Gift? or other?
Normal pennies like this without any providence sell for about $40- $50.
With its documented history I would expect its worth more than that.
I was in the right place at the right time, it comes to me from a coin collector and dealer.
It's the provenance that gives this coin extra interest. I'd pay extra for a mediocre quality coin with good provenance. Unfortunately, the vast majority of my coins have no provenance other than "some coin dealer somewhere".
Quote from: 'black sheep' pid='37674' dateline='1387608643'The reverse features a cross which was used to cut up these silver pennies into 2 half penny or 4 farthings...a lot were cut up but all in the hoard were complete.
The cross was used by people to halve and quarter the coins, but I'm not entirely sure it was the king's intent to provide this as a means of making loose change.
Indeed, cut coins were a major problem for the Long Cross series coins such as this. In solving one problem - coin clippers stealing silver from around the rim of the coin - they created another opportunity for the clippers when the coins were cut into pieces. That's because, unlike earlier cross designs, the long cross is a single, solid line. That means when a coin is cut along the line, only one half of the coin can be expected to bear a piece of the actual cross.
Cluey coin clippers noticed this and trimmed off the silver cross pieces off all the halves and quarters they made; do that to enough coins and you can build yourself a nice little pile of silver you can melt down for profit, while still spending the halves and quarters for full face value.