AUCTION UPDATE
gold shilling or thrymsa dating from 650-70 AD was recently sold for ?18,600 by Dix Noonan Webb. Measuring just 13 millimetres in diameter and weighing 1.3 grams, it had been expected to fetch £8,000-10,000 and was bought in the saleroom by a member of the trade for a client. Discovered in Haslingfield in South Cambridgeshire in January by 55-year-old drainage engineer, Mark Pallett from Brentwood in Essex, who decided to search a stubble field, which he has been to many times before, with his Minelab Equinox 800, it is one of only eight examples of this ‘Crispus’ type to have been recorded on the Early Medieval Coins database at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The gold shilling was in extremely fine condition and centrally struck with all the inscriptions visible. Following the sale, father-of-three Mark, who has been detecting for almost forty years said: ‘I am truly overwhelmed by the price that the coin achieved and am pleased for myself and the farmer who will get half of the proceeds. I did think about buying a
