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Auction: 5033 - The Colin Adams Collection of Halfcrowns
Lot: 154

Charles I, contemporary forgeries of a York Halfcrown in base metal (2), 11.60g., 11.72g., type 4, small equestrian portrait of king in armour left, holding sword upright, EBOR below, reads MAG BRI FR ET HIB, rev. oval garnished shield, m.m. lion (JGB 1080 (same dies); Besly p.232 and pl.8, 7(same dies); N.2312; S.2866) the first very fine, the second with EBOR tooled out on the coin, fine (2) Estimate £ 50-100PROVENANCE: (i) H M Lingford, collection purchased en bloc by Baldwin, 1951 (ii) Dix Noonan Webb, Auction 49, 21 March 2001, lot 520 The metal of these pieces is visibly debased. The silver content of two examples in the British Museum collection has been analysed at 55% and 44%, and they also contain around 5% of arsenic, a standard ingredient of counterfeiter´s recipes of the time intended to whiten the alloy. Besly demonstrates that these pieces can not be regular products of the York mint, but their presence in civil war hoards, BNJ 1991, p.131, shows that as counterfeits they are both skillful and contemporary.

Sold for
£260