Irish Coinage
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Detail Image

© 2002 - Copyright
John_Stafford-Langan
Version 1.10
14th September, 2002

This coin is a shilling of Elizabeth I's third Irish issue. It dates from early 1601. The trefoil mintmark which appears on both sides is a date indicator.

These coins occur with 3 mintmarks, the trefoil, the star and the martlet. The same three mintmarks are used on the copper pennies and halfpenies which are also dated and which allows a positive relationship between mintmarks and dates to be constructed.

This coin is in Good Extremely Fine (GEF) condition. It has excellent surfaces with considerable remaining mint lustre. However it has very poorly struck up legends and the periphery of the coin is generally weak.

These coins were made with very poor quality silver so corrosion is common on most examples. They are generally not well struck and most pieces have areas of weakness in the legends - typically, as these pieces we made in a 'rocker' press, two areas of weakness usually occur on opposite sides of the flan.

Overall this is a superb example of this issue - Better struck examples with a better flan are avalable, but this example has as good a surface quality as is available for the issue and is among the finest known because of the original lustrous quality of the surfaces.

For comparison see: Elizabeth I Shilling - third issue - mm trefoil

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