The Coinage of Offa

Triton XVIII, Lot: 1700. Estimate $1500. Sold for $1400. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ANGLO-SAXON, Kings of Mercia. Offa. 757-796. AR Penny (16mm, 1.31 g, 12h). Light coinage. Non-portrait type. Caentwarabyrig (Canterbury) mint; Eoba, moneyer. Struck circa 785-792/3. Θ¯F within lozenge with crosses at corners; R Є X m with pellets and trefoils around / Є O B A within angles of cross fleurée, with saltire of pellets in annulet at center. Naismith, Offa 36 (this coin); Chick –; SCBI –; BMC; North –; SCBC 904. Near VF, toned. Extremely rare – the only known example of this obverse type.

From the Joseph R Lasser Collection for the benefit of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Purchased from Davissons, April 2010. Ex Spink (25 March 2010), lot 11. Found in north Yorkshire, 2009.

During the eighth century AD, Mercia, under its king, Offa (757-796), was the largest and most powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom in England. As such, this kingdom maintained diplomatic and cross-cultural, and economic contacts with the Carolingian Empire on the Continent (see J. Nelson, “Carolingian Contacts,” in M.P. Brown and C.A. Farr, Mercia [London & New York, 2005]). The coinage reform begun by Pepin I and implemented by his son and successor, Charlemagne (see lot 1371) produced deniers struck on broad flans of good metal. This new coinage became the denominational standard throughout the Carolingian Empire, replacing the earlier, smaller Merovingian silver issues and the sceats found in northern Europe and across the English Channel. In Anglo-Saxon England, these earlier coin types were replaced with a new denomination, the penny. Based on the Carolingian denier, these coins first appear in two very rare issues of the Kentish kings, Heaberht and Ecgberht. It was Offa, however, who introduced the penny to a much wider audience in England, with both heavy and light issues in various portrait and non-portrait types. So successful was this new denomination that it continued to be the sole English silver denomination until the introduction of the groat, halfpenny, and farthing under Edward I in 1279.