Gold Coins Of Anglo-Saxon England

Tony Abramson's copiously illustrated and cross-referenced, 160-page catalogue, Gold Coins of Anglo-Saxon England, can be ordered directly from Tony Abramson. At a price of £30 (including P&P in UK), this hardback is excellent value.

This is a prequel to Sceatta List, covering all known 'thrymsas' and other gold denominations. This is the first fully-illustrated catalogue of known specimens since Humphrey Sutherland's 1948 Anglo-Saxon Gold Coinage and includes nearly 100 different varieties with numerous large-scale, high resolution images not previously available. This accessible and indispensable, hardback volume is a must for all detectorists, field liaison officers, curators, scholars, dealers, auction cataloguers and collectors.

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Studies in Early Medieval Coinage 3: Sifting the Evidence

In the years before his early death Mark Blackburn established himself as the central coordinating figure in early medieval numismatics in Britain, an inspiring figure still keenly missed. Part One comprises papers delivered at an international symposium, on this occasion held at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, in 2012, with a theme of Mark Blackburn and his legacy. Attention was given to the earliest gold coinage of the Merovingian Gaul and England. Contributors extended the ground breaking analyses of the silver proto-pennies in the earlier volumes, and the derivation of the word sceati was subjected to historical analysis. Building on Dr Blackburn's seminal work on the later broad Anglo-Saxon and Viking series, the symposium also explored the new historical perspectives to be gleaned from key recent hoards, and included detailed accounts of the current state of research on the Viking mints of Dublin and York.

Anglo-Saxon Counterfeits

As long as civilization has used coins as a form of currency there have been individuals who, for a number of reasons, have made fakes, replicas and counterfeits. Not all counterfeits are produced for personal profit and not all replicas are designed to deceive. However, to both scholar and collector, historical counterfeits have long been a matter of serious interest, concern and, in certain circumstances, an area of study in their own right. The Anglo-Saxon coinage with its huge variety of designs and styles, has been a lucrative target for pernicious counterfeiters. From the contemporary craftsmen who produced their own derivative copies to supplement the limited supply of coins, to the modern makers of museum replicas, the coins of the Anglo-Saxon period have been copied, replicated and forged to produce a corpus of material almost as extensive as the originals from which they draw their inspiration. In this ground breaking new study Tony Abramson brings together a vast catalogue of Anglo-Saxon counterfeits and copies in the first modern study of this fascinating subject. Fully illustrated with over 3,000 detailed images this study examines the types, styles and creative inspirations that have fascinated and intrigued all those who study early coinage. From contemporary copies to modern fakes, the catalogue is an essential guide for both scholars and collectors.

Coinage In the Northumbrain Landscape and Economy, c.575 - c.867

This book presents the author’s digitization of Pirie’s substantial yet flawed corpus of 9th-century Northumbrian ‘stycas’.

This database, enhanced by data from elsewhere, is compared by location with the artefactual database known as VASLE (created at the University of York, 2008) to demonstrate that the co-occurrence of coins and portable artefacts defines monetary evolution in Northumbria. Additionally, the author presents a new periodization and reveals the previously disparaged gold shillings of York to have been issued by Bishop Paulinus, a disruptive finding chronologically, with wider consequences. Northumbria benefited increasingly, both monetarily and fiscally, as the face value of coins fell. Other conclusions include the idea that Northumbrian coin production was erratic; that the Yorkshire Wolds were more highly monetized than the surrounding lowlands, indicating a more enterprising culture; that styca hoards represent episcopal expropriations; and that there were significant changes in settlement and economy in the central lowlands. This work demonstrates that monetization reflected northern independence, innovation and enterprise.

Sceatta List

Sceattas, or Sceats as they are often called, are regularly found by detectorists but are not so easy to identify. This book, with its hundreds of photographs and detailed descriptions, allows the reader not only to identify a coin with ease, but also gives a precise valuation in two conditions – A must have book for every detectorist and coin collector.

This third edition of Sceatta List takes the number of varieties listed and illustrated to beyond seven hundred. It builds on the work of pioneers in the field - Rigold, Metcalf, Blackburn and Gannon.

Stycas Simplified

Conventionally, Northumbrian Stycas have been seen as plain, base little coins. It is only in the last two or three decades, that it has been accepted that they were the first mass-produced coinage with a face value sufficiently low to meet regular needs, including paying church dues, a spiritual need felt as keenly as the temporal demands of daily life for the early medieval serf.

They were empowering and an economic catalyst of considerable numismatic significance.

Elizabeth Pirie dedicated years of work to compiling a corpus of Stycas, but her complicated arrangement makes access difficult for the newcomer to what, in reality, is a simple coinage. Tony Abramson digitised her database and as a result compiled this short booklet which covers identification of the entire coinage by the simple device of separating obverses from reverses, that is, issuers from moneyers, rather than building complex spiders’ webs of interrelated dies.

Sylloge of Coins Of The British Isles 69: The Abramson Collection Coins of Early Anglo-Saxon England and the North Sea Area

The Sylloge is a major series of catalogues of British and Irish coins in public and significant private collections, describing and illustrating coins and tokens ranging from Ancient British issues to those of the 17th century. The greatest coverage has been of the Anglo-Saxon period. This is a fundamental source of material for the study of coin issues and moneyers, designs and die-cutting styles, metrology, hoards and single-finds, and personal- and place-name forms. The volumes are of relevance not only to numismatists, but also to archaeologists and historians who increasingly have grown aware of the need to understand and use numismatic evidence. This book records, illustrates and describes the early Anglo-Saxon collection of Tony Abramson: one of the premier private assemblages of gold, silver and base-metal coins from the early medieval period, amounting to over 1,100 specimens. Traditionally known as gold shillings or thrymsas and silver pennies or sceattas, the coinages represented in this volume formed the first currency of Anglo-Saxon England, from c. 600 onwards. The entire Abramson collection was deposited at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, on lifetime loan. It represents a critical resource for all serious students of early Anglo-Saxon archaeology, history and numismatics.