I thought this article from the BBC might be of interest to some of you Hammered coin collectors: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-23081823
I like this. Lets see, William the Conqueror pennies are known from several different mints and while they aren't cheap they are fairly available. Now ONE coin is found from a mint in Gloucester and this means that Gloucester was the most important of towns? If it was so important why were so many of Williams coins made everywhere else? What it tells me is that Gloucester was at least somewhat important. On the other hand I agree the money was probably well spent. 2000 pounds strikes me as pretty cheap for that coin.
Yes - a good point well made! One suspects the writer of the article was somewhat biased. In fact JJ North, which is one of the best books on early medieval English hammered coins, list 75 towns that are believed to have minted Norman coinage, so at best Gloucester is "in the top 75"! In fact quite a few coins minted in Gloucester are known - the scarcity of the one in the article is that it was the first of that type and narrow time period to be discovered.
