Sale: CNG 75, Lot: 1344. Estimate $3000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 23 May 2007.  Sold For $5100. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ANGLO-SAXON, Crondall Period. Circa 620-645. AV Thrymsa (1.24 g, 3h). Whitmen type. Crude diademed bust right; trident cross before / Cross fourchée; blundered legend. Beowulf 1 (this coin); Crondall 69-89; Metcalf 1-21; North 25; SCBC 753. Good VF.

From the Beowulf Collection.

CNG is pleased to offer an extensive collection of Anglo-Saxon thrymsas, sceats, and stycas assembled over two decades by a specialized collector with an eye for both high-quality and rare specimens. Observers will note a wide range of types and sub-varieties, as well as a number of unique and new coins that add to our body of knowledge for this series. Particular highlights include an extremely rare issue of Aethelwald Moll (lot 1446), a beautiful Type 32a sceat, one of the finest examples of Anglo-Saxon numismatic art (lot 1420), an exceptional example of the rare SAROALDO-type (lot 1362), one of the finest specimens of the Series W sceats from Wessex (lot 1363), and a sceat from the elusive Beonna (lot 1483). A number of the coins in the collection have impressive pedigrees - for example, one each comes from the Aston Rowant and Hexham Hoards (lots 1366 and 1472, respectively) - and a few have been previously published.

The thrymsas and sceats portion of the collection will be published in a future article by Tony Abramson ("The 'Beowulf' Collection" in: T. Abramson, ed., Studies in Early Medieval Coinage [Heritage Marketing & Publications Limited, King's Lynn, forthcoming]). The 'Beowulf' reference in the lot descriptions is to the catalog number in this article. Additional notes on the iconography of various issues is derived from Anna Gannon's excellent book on the subject, The Iconography of Early Anglo-Saxon Coinage : Sixth to Eighth Centuries (Oxford, 2006).

As with many areas of numismatic research, CNG recognizes that there is an ongoing debate over several aspects of the chronology and attribution of the early Anglo-Saxon series. In general, the sceats are arranged by category -- Primary, Continental, and Secondary -- and within each by the chronology proposed by Blackburn and Grierson in their study of these coinages in MEC 1, with minor modifications by subsequent scholarship. For the sake of consistency, though, we have chosen to closely follow the attributions that will be presented in Abramson's article.