Auction: 18012 - The Williams Collection Part II, Anglo-Saxon and Viking Coins
Lot: 137
(x) Wessex, Alfred (871-899), Halfpenny, 0.64g, Two Line ('Guthrum') type, Cuthberht, +
Purchased from Baldwin, November 1991
Lockett, part 1, Glendining, 6 June 1955, lot 495, (illustrated with the reverse upside down, and the moneyer's name given as '
Watters, Glendining, 21 May 1917, lot 52 (moneyer's name given as '
Rashleigh, Sotheby, 21 June 1909, lot 232 (moneyer's name given as '
Bergne, Sotheby, 20 May 1873, lot 171 (moneyer's name given as
Murchison, Sotheby, 28 May 1866, lot 213 (moneyer's name given as
Martin, Sotheby, 23 May 1859, lot 18 (moneyer's name given as
From the Cuerdale, Lancashire, hoard, 1840
Illustrated in John Lindsay, A View of the Coinage of the Heptarchy (Cork, 1842), plate iv, no. 100. That the Rev. J. W. Martin was then the owner is confirmed on page 129.
It is interesting to note the various misreadings of the moneyer's name on this one specimen, culminating in the upside down illustration in the Lockett catalogue. In the British Museum catalogue, published in 1893, a die duplicate of this coin (436), is listed under Cudberht and the legend is correctly printed in retrograde. Indeed the Rashleigh catalogue does say the second line of the name is retrograde, and the Watters catalogue also notes the name is retrograde and even goes as far as to cite the two British Museum specimens, nos. 435 and 436, and yet these catalogues still give the name as
The various misreadings were not only caused by the failure to realise both lines of the legend were retrograde. The curves of the
It is also interesting to note the prices paid. At the Martin sale in 1859 the coin sold to Murchison for £18.10/-, a huge sum at the time, and a price that was unbeaten until the Lockett sale in 1955.
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Sold for
£4,000