This week’s fresh listings:
This page is to be updated every
Tuesday and will contain all the latest Coin,
Medal & Token listings for that particular week.
Most sold coins are now
accessible via a new link on the front (index) page category grid.
Additions to www.HistoryInCoins.com
for week commencing Tuesday 14th July 2026
Just
how many TOOTHED border machine-pressed sixpences of the much rarer 1564/3 date
do you see? And yet that coin is the
least notable of all the Fresh Listings this week!
For
those seeking grade, look no further than the incredibly impressive **high
grade** W&M tin halfpenny.
For
those like myself, fascinated by the rare and the
unusual, the Richard III groat (with BOTH Boar's Heads!) takes some beating...
and
yet it is beaten, hands down, by a humble Henry VII London penny!!
Enjoy.
WCA-9376: An Exceptional Grade 1691
William & Mary Tin Halfpenny.
Conjoined heads; date in exergue as well as on the edge legend. Britannia seated. S.R. 3449, Peck 572 (listed as Extremely
Rare). This ill advised tin issue was
initiated under Charles II in 1684 in an attempt to help out the ailing Cornish
tin industry. In 1692, tin coins were
gone, literally never to appear again within British currency. These soft tin coins had an alarming rate of
wear from circulation. The Ferryman’s hoard of W&M tin coins from the River
Thames in the 1970’s was made up of 1690 through to 1692 tin coins. There were
no copper 1694 coins leading to the conclusion that the purse was dropped into
the Thames 1693 or earlier. Of the many coins, the 1690’s were
all very worn, the 1691’s quite worn and the 1692’s being at least somewhat
worn. The 1690’s coins could only have been in circulation for three years or
so but they were all very worn. Even the coins that
had been in circulation for only up to a year or so were worn. This illustrates
just how hard it is to find high grade tin coinage. As well as wear, the tin
coinage corrodes in air and soil (tin was far too reactive a metal to be used
for coinage, something it took the mint 8 years to realise) so high grade
examples, invariably out of the Thames (ideal anaerobic conditions), which is
the likely source of this coin (although unlikely to be from the Ferryman's
Hoard due to the high grade for an early date coin), are at a huge
premium. Counterfeiting was clearly a
consideration back then as every tin coin that left the mint had a copper plug
– designed as an anti counterfeiting measure.
Perhaps the Mint ought to have had similar considerations just a few
decades on, during the mid to late 1700’s, when towards the end of the century,
counterfeit (and we’re talking really obvious / very little effort re dies or
even the final product) “copper” coins literally outnumbered the genuine
coinage in circulation! gVF grade (with the edge being the
best I have ever seen, bar none), which really is extraordinary for this
issue. Choice. 
£1,895
Provenance:
ex Colin Cooke collection
WTH-9377: 1564/3 Elizabeth 1st MILLED
or MACHINE PRESSED Silver Sixpence - TOOTHED Border. Initial
mark Star, bust D, S.R. 2597. A rare example of an overdate in the milled series. When you consider that “85% of Mestrelle’s
meagre experimental machine-made coins were sixpences dated 1562.
This leaves 15% for all the other Screw-Pressed sixpences, shillings,
groats, threepences, halfgroats, threefarthings and
the gold coinage”, you gain an insight into just how rare all non 1562
milled coins are. Queen Elizabeth 1st
herself visited both mints (Upper & Lower Houses) upon the occasion of the
near completion of the recoinage on 10th July 1561. She met with Eloye Mestrelle and viewed his
machinery. The visit was reported to be
six hours in length. Eleven years later,
Eloye Mestrelle was
dismissed from the mint in 1572 and just six years after that,
he was executed (hanged) for counterfeiting. £645
Provenance:
ex Ian Davison - renowned expert on hammered sixpences
WMH-9378: Excessively Rare Henry VII
Tudor TYPE 1 Hammered Silver Penny. Front facing depiction of
Henry VII, being very much a continuation of the Medieval pennies of Richard
III, Edward IV, etc and in essence, unchanged in style since Edward 1st. Initial mark Lis upon half Rose, London mint, S.R. 2218. Struck 1585-1587 only.
A new era - the House of Tudor - and a radical change of coinage to mark
the occasion: Sovereign pennies, profile images of the king, a new Testoon denomination and even the coinage they decided to
not change right away, the front-facing groats and halfgroats, were given
strikingly different crowns.
Understandably, this all took time to plan and execute. A rather unusual decision was taken by the
Tower mint during this hiatus: it was decided that enough older pennies were
already in circulation from earlier reigns (and indeed there was but the late
Medieval pennies of Edward IV and Richard III were shocking; intentionally
struck by northern ecclesiastical mints on short flans, clipped and generally
poorly struck) and thus until the planned move towards Sovereign pennies in
March 1489, only a trickle of pennies would be issued from the London mint;
essentially the old style pence but obviously with Henry's name. The thought process behind this was partly
continuity for the man in the street, partly getting the new king's name out
there but primarily it was just making sure the mint was seen to be doing
something under the new monarch whilst they got their heads around the very
complex and intricate Sovereign penny design - this had previously only been
attempted on the largest gold coin and was literally abandoned on the groat
after a momentary experiment. Lord Stewartby in his seminal publication, "English Coins
1180-1551", published by Spink in 2009, states, "Smaller silver with
the open crown of type 1 is all rare.
Very few halfgroats or pence of London are known."
Interestingly, the ecclesiastical mints of Canterbury, York and
Durham - the latter two church-run mints being the very ones
primarily responsible for the lack of quality of late medieval pence still in
circulation when Henry inherited the throne - struck and issued substantially
more old style pence than London. An incredibly rare coin,
literally bridging the transition from Medieval to Tudor coinage. Very, very few examples in private
collections, in fact I don't know of a single example anywhere else, private or
institutional. £1,275
Provenance:
ex Nigel Mills
WMH-9379: Desirable Richard III *BOARS HEAD* Medieval Hammered
Silver Groat. Class 2b, 20th July 1483 to June 1484, London mint, initial
mark Boar's Head 2 on the obverse with Boar's Head 1 on the reverse.
Spink 2156.
The Boar's Head initial mark (the White Boar was the personal device or
badge of Richard III and dear to his heart) was introduced 20th
July 1483
by mint master Robert Brackenbury, just a month after
Richard took the crown. It is
interesting to note that chronologically, it is accepted that BH1 preceded BH2
(see Tim Webb-Ware's seminal article on Richard III groats in the BNJ - the
well respected and extremely knowledgeable Ivan Buck [Medieval English Groats,
published Greenlight Publishing in 2000], confirms
this chronology), meaning that this coin was struck under BH2 with an old,
random reverse die off the shelf, in this case a BH1 reverse. Whilst mules are not uncommon - it is
postulated that old dies, with some life still left in them, were stored in
something akin to an open box - this BH2 / BH1 die combination is really quite
rare. Lord Stewartby
[English Coins 1180-1551, published Spink, 2009], lists only BH2 both sides for
class 2b with BH1 being nearly always overstruck on SR1 for the earlier class
2a where they were clearly recycling the old class 1 dies. Very clear regnal name (often lacking on
Richard III groats thanks to the clippers as well as the offset nature of many
coins) and equally clear initial marks - the Boar's Head mark is highly sought
after amongst collectors. Richard III was the last of the medieval monarchs,
losing to Henry Tudor on Bosworth
Field, or as is now the
current thinking, on a field a few short miles from that famous location. He was an unsavoury character - Shakespeare
was certainly no fan! Whist Richard was no saint (I think some poor
decisions and a ruthless streak that they all had at that time - could you even
be an effective monarch back then without such a streak?! - was about as bad as
it got), he probably wasn't a ‘child killer’, ‘murderer’, or ‘usurper’, at
least no more than any other medieval monarch.
Perhaps don't believe all that Shakespeare tells you!! Ex Mark Rasmusson, 2005 for £1,175, which
might seem an unusually low price, even taking into consideration that it was
more than 20 years ago now (today, £5,000 is not an uncommon price for nice
grade, regular groats - this coin being far from regular with BOTH boar's head
initial marks), but it should also be remembered that our understanding of the
coinage was not quite what it is now, thanks in no small part to Tim
Webb-Ware's published research, nor was the wider interest which blossomed upon
the discovery of the body of Richard III in a Leicestershire carpark in 2012. In
summary, here we have a Richard III groat with everything clear, including the
sought-after, all important Boar's Head initial marks, the king's name AND not
just Boar's Head 1 but Boar's Head 2 as well, all within a very good grade coin
indeed. £3,265
Provenance:
ex Mark Rasmusson (Summer 2005 FPL 8 list, sold for
£1,175)
