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Auction: 4002 - The Marshall Collection of British & World Coins
Lot: 311

James VI, Sixteen shillings, 10.93g., third coinage, 1581, crowned Scottish shield, iacobvs 6 dei gratia rex scotorvm, rev., crowned thistle dividing i r, annulet below, nemo me impvne lacesset (B 1a, fig. 930C; S.5482), a magnificent example of this extremely rare denomination, some old scuffs by I in reverse field, otherwise crisply struck on an exceptionally full round flan, extremely fine with an even dark grey tone, possibly the finest known Estimate £ 4,000-5,000 provenance: Spink Numismatic Circular, July 1944, no.26195 £35-0-0 For many years a figure of five known examples was quoted for the Sixteen shilling piece. It is certainly an exceptionally rare denomination but the corpus is likely to be nearer a dozen coins, of which eight have appeared on the market over the last forty years. Of these, this is undoubtedly the finest. It is fuller and sharper than the J Dresser specimen, lot 1876 (ex Parsons lot 755), and far out grades the H M Lingford specimen, lot 1153 (now in the Ashmolean Museum (SCBI35 1234), per Spink Auction 20, lot 209) which itself has been described as one of the finest extant

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£8,000