Historic Coinage

"A Basic Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Coinage types." - Written by a very good friend of mine, whose site can be seen here: Dave's Rare Hammereds

Early English Gold Coins.

These are called Thrymsa's. They were originally based on Roman gold coins and produced overseas [Anglo-Merovingian types, Tremissis etc..] and then later in this country. They circulated in England as an official bullion coinage. Value at that time was measured by weight in gold, and so unstruck coins or 'blanks' were also used. They are rare and expensive coins, and very difficult to obtain. This coinage was current c.500-c.620 or later.

Sceats.

The English gold coinage gradually became debased and this led to the production of the series of small, thick pictorial coins called by numismatists Sceats or Sceattas. They are unlikely to have been known to the Anglo-Saxons by this name, deniers or denarius was commonly used, as in former times. Again these were produced both abroad and in England. Sceats are fascinating in that many of them have animal forms on the obverse/reverse or both. These include wolves, birds, mythical dragons & centaurs, serpents and others. Recognisable kingly busts begin to appear around this time, and some coins have runic or Latin inscriptions, often blundered. Size is around 10mm in diameter and they are much thicker than silver pennies. Prices depend on condition, and they can often be picked up for next to nothing, especially poorer examples of the common types. Sceats were produced c.620-c.750. The word Sceat is pronounced 'shee-at' . They were made of silver in varying degrees of debasement.

Styccas.

Whilst the remainder of the English kingdoms progressed from sceats to broad-flan pennies in the 750's and later, Northumbria stuck with sceats. These silver coins evolved to include an animal form [probably heraldic] on the obverse and the kings name on the reverse, and eventually standardised with the kings name on the obverse and the name of the moneyer on the reverse. Rapid debasement followed and the voluminous later issues of the early-mid Ninth Century are found in base silver, copper alloy and even brass. They are slightly larger than sceats and about the same thickness. They were produced until c.870, when the area was overrun by the Viking invaders. The word itself is pronounced 'stu-kka' [with the 'u' as in bucket]. The common monarchs such as Eanred & Aethelred II can be bought very cheaply indeed, whilst the earlier silver coins of obscure monarchs such as Alchred are extremely rare and can cost many hundreds of pounds.

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