The first part of the Alan Williams collection – an archive of Anglo-Saxon, Viking and Norman coinage that was 40 years in the making – was sold by Spink on March 26. It included this silver penny struck during the early years of the reign of Aethelstan of East Anglia (c.825-845). Copying designs of Carolingian coins of the period, it includes the name of the monarch around a ship of a type introduced some time during the last years of Charlemagne.
Only one other Aethelstan penny with a ship on the obverse is recorded. Dug in West Harling in 1977, it was subsequently acquired by the Castle Museum, Norwich.