On 11 June 2014, a unique Anglo-Saxon silver penny fetched £78,000 at an auction at Dix Noonan Webb, the international coins and medals specialists, in London. The beautiful coin which provides a clue to the murder of an East Anglian king and which was found in a Sussex field by a metal detectorist is far above the pre-sale estimate of £15,000 to £20,000.
“There was fierce bidding for this unique coin,” said a spokesman for Dix Noonan Webb.
“The price paid shows that the worldwide market for important pieces like this Æthelberht II coin is extremely strong.”
Bidders in the room, on the internet and those who had lodged advance commission bids pushed the price up rapidly from its £17,000 starting point. The final hammer price was £65,000 and by the time buyers’ commission was added the winning bidder paid £78,000.
Darrin Simpson, the 48 year-old metal detectorist from Eastbourne, Sussex who found the coin, said:” It’s fantastic, an amazing result. I am really quite shocked.”
He will give half the money to the Sussex farmer who owns the field where the coin was found and another quarter to the three friends who were detecting with him when he discovered it in early March this year.
The coin auctioned at Dix Noonan Webb may have been one of the reasons for Æthelberht’s terrible end. The East Anglian king is believed to have struck the other three known coins from his reign with the approval of his much more powerful neighbour Offa. However the newly-discovered penny looks like an act of defiance by the increasingly ambitious Æthelberht.
Source: Dix Noonan Webb
