PREVIEW: BRITISH COINS: 16 APRIL

Once again, this British Coin sale contains a strong selection of Anglo-Saxon and Norman Pennies.
Noonans are delighted at the opportunity to re-offer a coin from the ‘Millennium’ Hoard as lot number 116 [estimate £400-500].

Don Crawley found this hoard below the ruins of a Saxon church in East Anglia in 2017 and originally offered it for sale through these rooms in December 2019.

Buried within a few years of the first millennium, perhaps by a repentant sinner, the hoard comprised many important rarities and was generally in an excellent state of preservation. The penny of York to be sold in April is well struck up, attractively patinated and a scarce variety of numismatic interest; beyond that it represents a tangible link back over a thousand years in English history.

Many collectors use coins as a means to assemble a gallery of royal portraiture. Within the Tudor series we find some of the most striking, dynamic and artistically accomplished portraits to appear on English coinage. The naturalistic and, to some extent veristic, numismatic depictions of Henry VII [lot 246 estimate £1,200-1,500] and VIII [lot 248 estimate £500-600] stand in sharp contrast to those of their predecessors. This trend was continued under Mary, represented in the April sale by a rare Fine Sovereign of 30 Shillings dated to 1553 [lot 278], shown here. The coin, marked with a pomegranate – the personal emblem of Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon – carries a magnificent depiction of the queen enthroned.

Vanishingly few examples of the 1809 Guernsey, Bishop de Jersey & Co., Five Shillings silver token survive, and they were the first coins issued under the jurisdiction of Guernsey.

Until the end of the 18th century, the Channel Island of Guernsey used French currency, but local traders who had formed a bank in partnership with the island’s seigneur in 1800 decided to strike a private issue of sterling currency with coins struck at the Soho Mint of Boulton and Watt in Birmingham.

The five shilling tokens of the self-styled Bank of Guernsey almost immediately came up against the wrath of the Guernsey legislature, which banned them. It is thought that the bulk would have been melted down, leaving the survivors as collectors’ rarities.

Within two years the bank had failed, and it is thought that the surviving tokens passed down through the families who had had them struck. The estimate is £10,000-12,000.