UK cut quarter hammered coins

I have found several cut quarter hammered coins while metal detecting here in the UK. Are there any specialist collectors or websites for such items? My latest such finds are shown below. Cut quarters of Stephen, Ethelred 2nd long cross and helmet types.

 

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Cool items. I also detect but here in the States. No hammered Silve for me. Oldest silver coin is a worn 1/2 reale.

 

Hi SensibleSal, Thanks for your kind comments. Out of interest, how old is your half reale and what realistically are the oldest coins you could expect to find where you are located? Where I live here in Somerset in the UK, the oldest coins tend to be Iron Age or Roman. My oldest coin find is this M. Furius roman republican denarius dating to 119bc .

 

Hi @David Woodhouse . First step with any hammered English coins is to own English Hammered Coinage" by J.J. North. This is the seminal work and essential. I am probably teaching my grandmother to suck eggs....
I collect hammered coins in the UK and find cut coins extremely frustrating as my time is limited. I once did a search by taking an image , posting it and then running a Google QR search and it correctly identified the coin from a quadrant.
Recently I read about Roman coins being discovered in the USA, clearly not lost by Romans but maybe part of traders bullion.
Your denarius is extraordinarily early for a UK find predating occupation by decades.
Well done on a fantastic find!
I live 4 hours drive from you by road but only 20 miles by sea!

 

Dafydd, many thanks for your advice and personal experience of identifying cut quarters. I don't own a personal copy of JJ North but have access to a copy via my detecting club's library. I identified the Stephen quarter using its cross moline reverse as a key indicator and quickly narrowed it down to a Watford type using my Spinks Coins as a reference. The 2 Ethelreds were a bit trickier. I recognised that they were probably saxon so went straight to the online Early Medieval Corpus of coins. The spiky hair and pointed nose on the obverse led me quickly to the long cross type and the armoured shoulder plates on the other coin led me to the helmet type. With regard to my denarius, I found several others on the same field over a few month period. The field where I found them lies alongside the A5 (formerly the roman Watling Street) on the outskirts of Telford. Immediately opposite on the other side of the road are the remains of a roman marching camp. In total I found around 300 roman coins, the vast majority of which were very corroded copper examples with very little, if any, detail left on them. The silver coins however faired much better in the ground retaining much of their detail. My second oldest coin is another Republican denarius from the same field. It is a L Censorinus denarius dating to 82BC. Some imperial denarii were also found. See below.

 

Congratulations on your finds. I take my hat off to you identifying any Stephen as many of his coins were weakly struck and rare. There are many who would be pleased to own an identified cut Stephen. Here is my full Stephen and it helps if you know beforehand it is a Stephen. As with a lot of coins it is better in the hand than in a photograph.


CROSS MALINE "WATFORD" TYPE PENNY ON NON NORWICH
S.2178

SEE ALLEN BNJ 2012 PAGE 113
Ex Michael Trenerry.

 

Dafydd, that is a lovely coin of Stephen. If finding that, I would have immediately known it was a Stephen because of the cross moline reverse and the faint stiefne on the obverse. The rarest cut quarter I've found was a Henry 1st type 9 which unfortunately disintegrated before my eyes when washing it under the tap when I got it home. The main site I search is a field directly behind a 13th century church. It has produced coins of Ethelred 2nd, Cnut, Henry 1st, 2nd and 3rd, John, Henry 2nd, short cross and tealby, Edward 1st, 2nd and 3rd, Henry 8th, Elizabeth 1st, Charles 1st, commonwealth, Louis 14th, venetian soldinos and the odd roman bronze constantine along with some nice artifacts. Below are some of the Henry 1st coins/fragments and a photo of the field with the church in the background.