Edward I was a remarkable king. After almost losing his crown to Simon de Montford, Edward escaped his captors, built an army and defeated Montford in battle. As king Edward captured Wales and defeated the Scots. He took the Stone of Destiny from the Scots, which the British kept until a bit over a decade ago. It is not well known, but Edward was a coinage reformer as well. He vowed to drive out the low quality coins from the European Continent that were circulating in England and replace them with reliable English coins. After four years, Edward succeeded in making his goal. I recently purchased a third Edward I penny. The first one I bought was back in the 1980s when I knew nothing about British coins. It is fairly low grade, but I was able to give it a Spink, now Sovereign Rarities number, 1409. I bought this second piece at a Baltimore coin show. It's nice, but the ghosting from the cross on the reverse was getting to me. It looks better in hand than it does in this picture. It is a Spink 1408 And here is my latest and I believe my last one. Henry has a bit of a "horse face" on this one. The Spink number is 1392.
I found one of those down my street back in the early 90's. The water company dug out a massive trench to lay new piping. I went along with my metal detector and there it was in the spoil, untouched for centuries.
