Two Books

On Tuesday 23rd January, YNS President Tony Abramson spoke at the British Numismatic Society meeting at the Warburg Institute on the topic of Reassessing the York Gold Shilling. Spink took the opportunity to display two new volumes from the speaker. The first is an update of the popular Sceatta List. This second edition of Sceatta List adds more than a hundred new varieties of early pennies. It builds on the work of pioneers in the field – Rigold, Metcalf, Blackburn and Gannon. While this topic, with its huge variation in designs, has more than its fair share of difficulties, the author has always sought to make the subject more accessible to occasional users. This is achieved through the generous use of illustrations, the majority taken from his own collection housed at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Moreover, the author provides insight to the organisation, dating and designs of this seventh- to eighth-century medium of exchange where the medium is the message, though often obscured by the passage of time. The volume is essentially for – and essential to – collectors, curators, cataloguers, detectorists and dealers, among others, and includes guidance on scarcity and values. The second volume compliments the first and is no. 69 in the Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles, listing over 1,100 early Anglo-Saxon coins of England and the North Sea area. This collection is housed in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Both volumes are available only from Spink: