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For your pleasure, here are a handful of the treasures I have been privileged to handle. Please do not ask to buy any of these coins. They were sold long ago into collections I have been helping to build. I hope you enjoy reading about them and studying their images.

click for enlargement	The Beonna Interlace Penny Beonna, the earliest king of East Anglia, struck this curious silver penny about A.D. 758. His name appears in Runic letters arranged around a central pellet. Only six specimens are known, and all but one of them are in museums. This is the only Interlace penny in private hands! It was found by a metal-detectorist in 1987, in the center of the area known in Anglo-Saxon days as East Anglia (northeast of London today). The ultimate early Anglo-Saxon classic!
click for enlargement	Elizabeth I "Fine Sovereign" Struck by hand circa 1583-1600, this magnificent coin is made of nearly pure gold. The design is a Tudor classic — it shows Good Queen Bess "at state," holding the orb and sceptre of power, with a diademed background as can be found in portraits of her made from life. On the reverse is a huge Tudor Rose surrounding the English shield. A Latin legend reads "This is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes" (Psalm 118:23, referring to Elizabeth's divine right to rule). This is a stunning coin of England's most brilliant monarch, whose reign marked the beginnings of Empire. No finer specimen exists!
click for enlargement	King James I Spur Ryal The only English coin to show a man o' war ship, this fabled rarity was coined at the Tower Mint in the center of ancient London circa 1612-1613. Perhaps the most elegant of all early gold coins, it is a fitting tribute to the king who was a Scottish warrior as a boy and an English scholar as a man — for it was King James who authorized and oversaw the most famous of all translations of the Bible. The term "Great Britain" was first used (on the coinage as "MAG BRIT") during James' reign. Here is a world-classic numismatic treasure!
click for enlargement	The Crowning Rarity of an Uncrowned Monarch Shown to the left is one of the finest known examples of the rarest gold coin of Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England during the Puritanical decade of the 1650s. In point of fact, this 1658-dated Half Broad, valued at 10 shillings in the currency of the era, was never struck during Cromwell's short-lived rule over England. It was, in effect, the first Half Guinea, but this denomination was first struck for currency use in 1669. The coin shown here was actually minted in 1738 using fresh dies that were fashioned after Thomas Simon's design for the contemporary Broad and engraved by Johann Sigismund Tanner. The Half Broad, one of the great rarities among English gold coins, is famed throughout the world as the crowning numismatic signature of a soldier who led a revolt of the landed gentry against King Charles I, defeating him and beheading him in 1649. That revolt, known to history as the Civil War, was meant to end the monarchy of the Stuarts, but Oliver Cromwell passed quietly away after only a few years as head of state, his son Richard proved a lackluster successor, and in short order the Royalists brought the dead king's son home from exile in the French Court. Thus another Stuart was crowned, as King Charles II, and Oliver Cromwell's reputation began to suffer such that his coins ceased to circulate and the head of his exhumed body was placed on a pike at Westminster Hall, where it rotted and mummified in the river air for years on public display. This Half Broad is a marvelous memento of those troubled times, and is one of only about 35 known. Like many English rarities, money alone will not secure one; opportunity is required as well, for most are locked up in collections. Truly a classic of the Civil War and Restoration period!
click for enlargement	1664 "Elephant" hallmark Golden Guinea The gold coinage of King Charles II is generally elusive. Gold was not plentiful during this era, and most gold coins were used at Court and by only the very wealthy aristocracy. One of the great rarities of this period is the guinea made at the Tower Mint in 1664 bearing an unusual hallmark below the king's portrait — that of an elephant, denoting that the gold used in this coin came from Guinea, after which the coin itself was named. This portrait piece is a fitting tribute to England's greatest patron of the arts. Unpriced in most reference books, this is the very finest example of just a handful of coins known — a classic of the Reformation!
click for enlargement	World-famous 1703-VIGO 5 Guineas During the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714), who was the last monarch of the Stuart family, England engaged in what history calls the War of the Spanish Succession. Piracy at sea was practiced by one nation against another, as war galleons constantly sought out the enemy's treasure ships. In the early days of October 1702, shortly after Anne took the English throne, an Anglo-Dutch expedition sacked the Spanish towns of Cadiz and Vigo, seizing what would prove to be one of the largest treasures ever captured at sea. More than eleven million Pieces of Eight were taken from the Spanish at Vigo Bay. These pieces were coined by the Spaniards from silver they had mined in the New World and were transporting to the Royal Mint at Madrid. Among the tons of silver, the British discovered also a small quantity of gold, always a much rarer metal than silver, and always prized. All of this captured booty was transferred to British ships and sailed home to England, where it was delivered to the Royal Mint at London for re-minting into English coin. To commemorate the capture, and to figuratively thumb their noses at the Spanish, the British placed the word VIGO in nice bold letters under Queen Anne's portrait on the front of the coins. In charge of the massive re-minting was none other than Sir Isaac Newton, then Master of the Mint. While tons of silver coins were made, there was only 267 pounds Sterling worth of gold, and almost all of it was coined into the smaller, more usable Guinea and Half Guinea coins. Today even these small gold pieces are extremely rare, for it seems most perished in subsequent centuries (they most probably were melted about 1817 for use as the then-new Sovereign gold coin, which weighed about 5% less and became the standard "pound" coin by the early 19th century). Of all the Vigo coins made, the rarest at the time was the large 5-Guinea piece, and today it is believed that only about 15 to 20 are known in all. It is often called the rarest of all English gold coins. Certainly it is the most famous! The specimen shown here is one of the finest known, and I have been privileged to be able to see it, to handle it, to photograph it, and to help place it in one of the most important American collections in existence.
click for enlargement	Extremely Rare 1818 Proof Sovereign Old King George III began ruling England in 1760. By the next century, he had lost the American colonies and, suffering from a disease inherited from his Stuart ancestors called porphyria, he appeared insane for a number of years before his death in 1820. During the Regency of George IV, a new coinage of gold appeared in 1817 bearing the likeness of the old king, mated with a reverse designed by the famed Italian engraver Benedetto Pistrucci, featuring the patron saint of England, George, slaying a fierce dragon from horseback. This "Age of Romance" design, slightly modified, remains on the back of the gold sovereign to this very day. In 1818, the sovereign mintage was meager, resulting in a very rare collectible date. Rarest of all is the "Proof of Record" of this year — only a few pieces are known! A British classic in gold!
click for enlargement	A Fabulously Rare European Ducat At the end of the Middle Ages, a new kind of coin was born in Europe. It was called the ducat, and it signaled the first use of a gold coin intended for broad trade across the continent. Its origin was Venice, the trading capital of the Mediterranean, and although its appearance differed widely its gold content was a standard 3.5 grams. This caused ducats to circulate widely and for many years. But a fate common to these dependable units of exchange was destruction: as a coin aged and wore, and wandered ever farther from its home country, it would be melted and changed into a new ducat from a new kingdom or city-state. This was how gold came to be understood as universal money. . . . One of the rarest kinds of ducats, among hundreds of types, are those of Sweden, a land remote from Europe's trading centers. Most Swedish ducats never returned home. Almost all have high catalogue values, proving they were melted abroad. Among the rarest of these are the early issues of King Karl XI (also called Carolus or Charles: 1660-1697). Only a few are known in Uncirculated condition. Major collections tend to possess nothing finer than VF. This Gem BU jewel features a classic portrait and the interlocked Cs of the monarch's cypher. It survives as a symbol of its age, and is a classic among golden European rarities.