Details

LOT 3616

England. 'Cross and Pellets' Pb Token. 1425-1490.

London or Paris mint. Mitchiner Type Ma. Large E in Gothic within clockwise ray border / Cross with dot-in-circle in each angle and expanded arms; al within clockwise ray border. Mitchiner & Skinner type M, 2. Near Very Fine.(0.62gr, 12mm.).

Provenance

Found from Billingsgate spoil from the Thames foreshore, London, UK, in the 1980s.
Property of an Essex collector.

Footnotes

The 'cross and pellets' tokens differ from the other series of fifteenth-century tokens found in London by virtue of their close links with a series of French tokens. They have been found with not quite equal frequency in London and in Paris. The uniformity of design suggests centralised production control (such as by a guild) but the range of symbols - religious, merchant, brothels - suggests a wide range of users.