Æthelred II (978-1016), Penny, First Hand type, Lympne, Leofric, leofric m–o lima·, type with left-facing bust, shallow box-like ‘cuff’ above hand on rev., 1.53gm (Dolley and Talvio SE(L); Hild 1612 [= Dolley, BNJ 1966, p.191, same dies]; N 767; S 1145). Very fine and excessively rare, the first coin of this type to appear at auction since 1987; only two other coins of this type known for the mint, both in institutional collections (£2,000-3,000)

Die-axis 6h. This coin, which has never appeared on the open market before, is a somewhat superior die-duplicate of the example in the Royal Swedish Coin Cabinet, illustrated by Dolley (BNJ 1966, p.191) as part of an addenda to his corpus of the then known specimens of First Hand pennies with left-facing bust (BNJ 1964, p.37). Dolley recorded a total of 17 known coins for the type, from two stylistically distinct mint groupings: Canterbury/Lympne, and Chester/Hereford/Shrewsbury. Kenneth Jonsson’s Viking-Age Hoards and Late Anglo-Saxon Coins, published in 1986, took the total number of known specimens to 27, while an additional four coins of Chester and a single coin of Shrewsbury were in the Dublin (Castle Street) hoards unearthed in 1993 and awaiting publication. Of the 17 recorded by Dolley, 7 are in the British Museum (including the repaired fragment of Lympne by the moneyer Leofwine, which derives from the Ipswich Find of 1863 and was presented by Henry Mossop in 1963), 5 in the Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm (including the die-duplicate of the present coin), and one each in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the Grosvenor Museum, Chester. Two coins of Canterbury are in private hands (one is currently on long-term loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum, the other, namely the Elmore Jones specimen [lot 150], passed to Mrs Norweb and was sold as lot 1203 of the Norweb collection in 1987 for £1,500), as is, presumably, one of Shrewsbury whose whereabouts were a mystery to Dolley in 1966 and remain so today. See Colour Plate III