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Auction: 18011 - The Williams Collection of Anglo-Saxon, Viking and Norman Coins - Part I
Lot: 16

(x) Mercia, Offa (757-796), with Eadberht, Bishop of London (+c.787-789), Penny, 1.18g, 3h, light coinage, + o / ff / ar / ex, around large lozenge with central circle containing a lobed cross saltire, trefoils in angles, rev. adb / erht, in two lines within beaded rectangle, divided horizontally by a bar with forked ends, cross above, ep ligatured below (Chick 79b this coin; N.280/281; S.911), an exceptional coin, round and of good metal and very attractively toned, extremely fine, a great rarity, only two examples listed by Chick, the other in the Vatican collection, apparently from a 9th century Italian hoard

provenance
Lawrence Stack, Sotheby, 22 April 1999, lot 276
Spink Numismatic Circular, December 1988, no. 7790
Glendining, 3 October 1988, lot 141
Found at Eastbury, near Lambourn, Berkshire, November 1987 (EMC 1999.1004)

For a discussion of this coinage and a possible link with the Synod at Chelsea in 787 at which the Province of Canterbury was divided and a new Mercian See created at Lichfield, see Chick, 'Towards a Chronology for Offa's Coinage: An Interim Study' in The Yorkshire Numismatist 3 (1997) and revised in The Coinage of Offa and his Contemporaries, pp. 9-10

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Sold for
£7,500