Penny of Ecgberht

This extremely rare penny of Ecgberht was found in North Yorkshire in 2022. It’s importance stems from the fact that it is a coin of a West Saxon king produced at the London mint. This was possible because Ecgberht’s conquest of London in 829 and his subsequent assumption of the title “King of the Mercians”.

In Naismith’s “The Coinage of Southern England “, published in 2011, only four examples are listed. Two are in the British Museum and one in the Fitzwilliam. in In the decade since, three more were discovered by detectorists, all in a poor state of preservation. This is only the eighth known example of Ecgberht’s London coinage.