Hi all, I know that this is a Henry VI halfpenny but don’t know and can’t figure out the mint or a smaller year range than his reign. Any help would be much appreciated!
It looks a lot like North, Plate III #24. That would put it at Henry VI's Trefoil coinage (1438-1443). Less ambiguously, the mint is London: [L]On / DOn / CIVI /[TAS]. ...No Trefoil is wrong, because there are no marks in the field. This is when you have to envy people like North and Stewartby, who had years of living with the variants.
If your frame of reference runs more to Edward I's New Coinage, like mine does, the lettering style changes dramatically over the 14th and 15th centuries, becoming more 'Lombardic'. Kind of a dress rehearsal for Henry VII's first Renaissance, profile groats and halfgroats ...right, still with very Lombardic, late Gothic lettering. ...Speaking of lettering, even for English hammered, I reflexively put the cut-off between 'medieval' and 'modern' not at the shift from hammered to milled, but between late Gothic and Roman lettering. To me, that Yells 'Renaissance /Modern /16th century /we're not in Kansas anymore.' ..Doesn't strike me as being any more arbitrary a criterion than the merely technological shift in minting practice.