Exceptional Alfred

CNG 87, Lot: 2074. Estimate $15000. Sold for $23100. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ANGLO-SAXON, Kings of Wessex. Alfred the Great. 871-899. AR Penny (19mm, 1.30 g, 12h). Cross-and-Lozenge type (BMC v). Uncertain mint; Beorheah(?), moneyer. Struck circa 877-880s. ΛELFRED REX SΛX, diademed bust right / BERHAH MOHETΛ, cross pattée within lozenge over long beaded cross; crossbars at lozenge ends. Blackburn & Keynes Cantebury B style (moneyer unrecorded); BMC -; North 629; SCBC 1058. Near EF, darkly toned. Unrecorded moneyer for issue. Excellent style. Extremely rare.

The resolution of the moneyer’s name is not certain. No moneyer in the Early Medieval Corpus is recorded as having signed their dies as BERHAH, but there is a moneyer Beorheah who struck coinage under Burgred, and signed some dies as BERHEAH. The fact that the legend starts at the left shoulder is unusual in the series, though a few issues are known to Blackburn & Keynes (nos. 53-6 and 58) from the moneyers Lulla and ...lf from uncertain mints. Unlike those issues, however, there is no initial cross in the legend on this coin, and the style of the bust is also dissimilar to those coins.