John Conduitt's Top 10 World Coins 2021

I’ve already posted my top 10 ancients https://www.cointalk.com/threads/john-conduitts-top-10-ancients-of-2021.390602/ but there aren't so many Top 10s in the World Coin Forum, so I'm adding a top 10 here. It’s good to be reminded of the great coins we’ve bought this year!

Here are my top 10 world coins (in no particular order):

10. Saxon Secondary Series O Type 40 Sceat, 710-760

Saxon Kingdom of Wessex. Silver, 1.05g. Figure facing, wearing long tunic, long cross pommée at either side. Monster in flight left, looking back, gaping jaws, crest, raised tail, clawed foot below; foreleg raised above head (SL 55-10 plate coin; SCBI 69, 598 this coin; North 114; Spink 807B plate coin). Ex Tony Abramson. Found near Wetwang, East Yorkshire, late 2006 (EMC 2008.0064 = BNJ Coin Register 2008, no. 160 https://emc.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/full-record/20080064).

This coin, merging early Christianity with late paganism, represents everything I love about Saxon coinage - enigmatic, historical, handsome, and slightly amusing.

Tony Abramson’s collection provided a fair few of my coins this year, all with great provenance. I’m always on the lookout for coins that detail where they were found, particularly if they’re registered with the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme https://finds.org.uk/database or the Early Medieval Coin Corpus (EMC) at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge https://emc.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/. Tony Abramson also added them to the British Numismatic Society’s Coin Register https://www.britnumsoc.org/publications/Digital BNJ/pdfs/2008_BNJ_78_11.pdf and used them as plate coins for his Sceatta List (SL 55-10), the Fitzwilliam Museum’s Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles (SCBI 69, 598) and Spink (807B). His coins were even exhibited at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

9. Commonwealth Sixpence (Mintmark Anchor), 1660

Tower Mint. Silver, 2.98g. English shield within laurel and palm branch, anchor mintmark, THE COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. English and Irish shields, value VI, GOD WITH VS (S 3220). The shields on the reverse were satirically referred to as ‘breaches for the Rump’.

Talking of provenance, this Commonwealth coin came directly from the collection of a man who died 200 years ago. Samuel Birchall of Leeds (1761-1814) was a numismatist and the first to catalogue trade tokens. He would’ve been more famous if he’d been better at it than James Conder.

The coin is notable for being struck after the 1657 Trial of the Pyx, from which point the mintmark was changed from a sun to an anchor (and the quality fell). Oliver Cromwell died soon after and his son Richard took over, so the anchor is associated with Richard. The rarity of coins with anchor mintmarks is due to a low mintage and because Charles II melted them down, reducing the population by two thirds. I wrote more here: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/samuel-birchalls-commonwealth-anchor-sixpence.382192/

8. Berke Khan Yarmak, 1265

Qrim (Crimea), Golden Horde. Silver, 23mm, 2.2g. Padishah//Islam Nasir//Defender of the faith and peace. Struck at Qrim mint (around tamga in centre of circle); uncertain Persian legend (around outside) (Sagdeeva 6; Album 2019G; Zeno 82173, this coin). One theory is that the reverse legend reads ‘blessed be this year of the black cow.’ To get this coin I had a somewhat surreal bidding war with the agents of an Australian university, who fortunately made a mess of it.

Mongol coins are fascinating, despite looking like they’ve been run over by a Soviet tractor. It doesn’t help that they adhere to Islamic aniconism. But there’s little you can find on a coin as curious as a tamga – an abstract emblem of a tribe, used by Eurasian nomads to brand animals and identify their clans on coins and seals. Tamgas don’t get any bigger and bolder than Berke’s on the coin above. Berke, a grandson of Genghis Khan, was leader of the Golden Horde and ravaged Eastern Europe. I wrote about the Mongol Empire and their coins here: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/th...st-asian-empire-that-reached-the-west.379056/

7. James I Harington Type 1b Farthing Token, 1613-1614

London Token House. Copper, 0.30g. IACO D*G. MAG BRIT; privy mark (central jewel on band of crown) unmodified(?) (Obverse 1). Harington knot; FRA.ET.HIB.REX (Spink 2675; Everson Type 1b 11; Peck/BMC Type 1b 39).

This little token is one of England’s first copper coins, produced privately under a patent from James I. It took a surprising amount of effort to get small change to the masses, and there are lots of varieties of these that make them very collectible. They include the first bi-metallic coins and were the first with a privy mark as a security feature. I wrote about them here: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/en...annia-married-her-royal-lovers-cousin.381773/

6. Vasiliy I Dmitrievich Denga, 1410-1415

Suzdal. Silver, 12mm, 0.54g. Leopard. SEAL OF SZHALSK (ПYТ / СЖДЛ / СКѦ in centre; ПЕYѦТЬ СУЖДАЛЬСКА or similar around) (HP 1918 A). Vasily Dmitriyevich was the independent Grand Prince of Moscow from 1395-1412, who also ruled as a vassal of the Golden Horde between 1389-1395 and 1412-1425. From 1392 he also controlled Suzdal, and both anonymous and named coins were struck in the city.

Russian coins before Ivan the Terrible get very confusing - for the preceding couple of hundred years a plethora of regional princes struck little shards of silver called dengas. The experts have quite a job trying to sort out who struck what and when, particularly when many are anonymous or have fantasy Arabic legends. This one isn’t rare and is attributable to Vasiliy Dmitrievich, son of Russian hero Dmitry Donskoy, who was the first to properly challenge the Golden Horde. But you don’t often get a nice clear strike of a handsome leopard for a reasonable price.

5. George III Penny, 1797 (converted to a Convict Farewell Token)

London. Copper, 36mm, 25g (KM 618). Smoothed and engraved: WHEN / THIS YOU SEE / REMEMBER ME / DEAR MOTHER / 1827. CP to RP within a pierced love heart, below a Tudor King’s Crown; rose, thistle and shamrock extending out from behind the heart, representing the countries of Britain.

George III’s ugly mug has been completely filed off this Cartwheel penny, which was a common practice when creating love tokens. The most poignant of these are convict tokens, which were made for those sentenced to transportation to Australia to give to their loved ones. They’d likely never see each other again.

Attributable convict tokens are rare and hugely expensive, but there are many that only give the person's initials, and these are a little more affordable. This one seems to have belonged to Catherine Parmenter (CP), an 18-year-old Catholic who was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for highway robbery. Her sentence was commuted to transportation for life. (I haven’t proved it’s Catherine’s token, but I’ve excluded the other 6 CPs who were transported in 1826-8).

Catherine was 5’2”, fair, stoutish, freckled and pockpitted, with light brown hair and hazel and grey eyes. She was from Kent (which along with her Catholicism may point to gypsy roots) but had been a servant in London. ‘Highway robbery’, it turns out, doesn’t involve a cape and a mask. She and her accomplices struck a man in the street and robbed him of his watch. Another girl was also transported, while a boy (who helped them escape) was imprisoned for a year and publicly whipped. The girls got very seasick on the ship but reached Sydney Cove in the summer of 1827. Catherine married in 1829, but was refused permission to marry again in 1846, because she was already married. She was pardoned in 1851 and died in New South Wales in 1876 aged 67, having never returned to England.

4. Henry VI Pinecone-Mascle/Trefoil Mule Groat, 1434-1438

Calais. Silver, 28mm, 3.9g. Pinecone-Mascle obverse; +hENRIC.DI.GRA.REX.ANGL.S.FRANC. Trefoil or Leaf-Trefoil reverse; +POSVI DEVM:A DIVTOR EMEVM; VIL:LA: CALI SIE. Initial mark cross patonce IIIb (S 1875/1899). Ex Ivan Buck (author of Medieval English Groats). From the Reigate Brokes Road (Surrey) Hoard 1990. The reverse is a die match for a Trefoil groat from the same hoard. However, the Pinecone-Mascle was issued in 1430-1434, the Leaf-Trefoil in 1435-1438 and the Trefoil in 1438-1443, meaning the reverse would be 4 years later than the obverse. Output at the Calais mint was very low at the time, so it’s possible there was quite a gap.

Provenance is the attribute that most entices me to buy a particular coin, and this is no exception. There are more attractive Henry VI groats, but they’re not rare mules that belonged to one of the authorities on the subject. Neither are they from one of the biggest hoards of the era.

The Reigate Brokes Road Hoard was found in 1990 near the site of a 1972 discovery of 987 coins. Two pottery jugs contained 6,705 groats, half-groats and pennies, stacked vertically in concentric circles. It was the largest post-1351 British hoard. Like the 1972 hoard, the coins dated from 1272 to 1455 and were mostly of Henry VI. It was deposited around 1454, the year of peace between the Hundred Years' War and the Wars of the Roses.

3. Eadberht Saxon Series Y Secondary Sceat, 737-758

York, Kingdom of Northumbria. Silver, 1.0g. Fantastic animal left, cross under tail, triquetra below. Large cross in centre; .EOTBEREhTVF (S 847). Eadberht’s reign was prosperous and he pursued imperial ambitions aided by his brother, the Archbishop of York.

This year, my Anglo-Saxon collection expanded to Northumbria, with several sceattas and stycas coming my way. Northumbrian coins are some of the only early Anglo-Saxon coins to name monarchs – they feature the king or archbishop’s name on one side and the moneyer’s on the other. The earlier Northumbrian issues, however, feature a ‘fantastic animal’ instead of a moneyer, which makes them stand out.

2. Elizabeth I Sixpence, 1562

Tower. Silver, 3.0g. ELIZABETH.D.G.ANG.FRA.ET.HIB.REGINA; mintmark star. POSVI/DEVM.AD/IVTORE/ M.MEVM (S 2595). This sixpence is notable as one of the first milled coins. It was minted around June 1562, the 4th type of Eloy Mestrelle’s sixpences. Three quarters of his output was in sixpences.

Elizabeth I initiated a ‘great recoinage’ to replace the old debased coins her father had issued. Frenchman Eloy Mestrelle was brought in to produce milled coins far superior to the hammered issues, albeit much more slowly. Cast ingots were passed through a cutter, and the resulting blanks passed through a roller and recut to get them to weight. The design was added with a horse-powered screw press.

The mint workers didn’t like Mestrelle, since he threatened their jobs, although his output was low enough that hammered coins continued in abundance. Mestrelle was forced out of the mint, accused of counterfeiting for a second time, and hanged in 1578. Shakespeare mentions his coins being used as gaming counters.

1. George V Suffragette Penny, 1911

London. Bronze, 30.8mm, 9.4g. GEORGIVS V DEI GRA: BRITT: OMN: REX FID: DEF: IND: IMP:. Seated Britannia with trident and shield bearing the Union flag, sea behind; ONE PENNY (S 4051-3). This coin was punched ‘Votes for Women’, the suffragette slogan, around 1914. The suffragettes were inspired by the ‘Vive l'Anarchie’ countermarks that had appeared in England by 1913. They deliberately stamped the king’s face as a symbol of male authority, avoiding Victoria when stamping her coins. In 1918, at the end of the war, all men over 21 and all women over 30 were given the vote. All women over 21 got the vote in 1928.

I collect coins with political graffiti, and ‘Votes for Women’ is one of the most iconic. Ironically, it may have done more to highlight women’s rights in modern times than it did at the time. It was not mentioned for the best part of a century until the 2000s, when the British Museum used their suffragette penny as an exhibition centrepiece. It subsequently featured in a BBC series History in 100 Objects https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v73z9

It’s newfound fame has led to a lot of fakes - 20th century pennies are cheap and anyone can punch letters into them. Fortunately, the coins matching the British Museum’s were punched with one set of stamps, and it’s not easy to replicate the distinctive letters, serifs and weak points. Most fakes look very different and even use sans serif, which wasn’t widely available in 1914.

Here’s to a great coin collecting 2022, although this time I hope lockdowns are finally banished to history and I have less to spend on coins. Happy New Year!

 

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Liking that #2 and #4 wow sweet coins.

 

You have a fruitful 2021 on coins, John.
I like both your Saxon coins, together with your Elizabeth I sixpence.

 

Quite an eclectic collection, John! I especially like that great portrait on the Elizabeth I sixpence and the strong strike of the Saxon sceat. I do appreciate the research you did on the convict cartwheel penny.

 

A very nice group! My favorites are #'s 2, 3, and 9.

 

Your number 10 and 3 are brilliant high quality for the types and couple off coins I would love in my collection, congrats.

 

I like them all, but #10/ 4/ 3 are really nice.

John