Description
Great Britain. Aethelred II the Unready, 978-1016. Penny 997-1003, London. Silver 1.63 g.; 20.3 mm.
Very rare. Very nice coin in rare condition with nice strike. From the Shaftesbury Hoard.
Mint state
Comment
R H M Dolley, writing in Numismatic Chronicle, 1956, ‘The Shaftesbury Hoard of Pence of Aethelraed II’, pp. 267-280, stated: “In the British Numismatic Journal for 1941, Mr. A. H. Baldwin recorded the fact that a most interesting parcel of Anglo-Saxon silver coins had been ‘discovered amongst certain property left by an inhabitant of Shaftesbury’. The parcel comprised 65 coins, all of them Aethelraed II’s Long-Cross type (Hildebrand D = Brooke 5 = B.M.C . IVa = Hawkins 207). […]
Recently [in 1955] there has come to light a further parcel from the same hoard, and new information concerning the circumstances of the discovery. The coins were found on the outskirts of Shaftesbury itself, not a couple of hundred yards without the defences of the Saxon burgh. They numbered roughly one hundred, and appear to have been contained in a wood or leather coffer cramped with iron bands.