Aethelred II, Type 5 - Long Cross penny, Moneyer, Wulfmær of Castle Gotha

O’Brien Coin Guide: Anglo-Saxon Coins & Their Links To Ireland

It may come as a bit of a surprise to many that although Celtic coins have not (yet) been discovered in Ireland, there have been a lot of Roman and Anglo-Saxon coins found – especially the latter.  Conservative Irish historians have always said the Romans never got here but they rarely even mention the Anglo-Saxons…

Hiberno-Manx silver penny, viking, Phase II imitation, isle of man, feremin,

O’Brien Coin Guide: The enigma of the Hiberno-Manx Coinages of the mid-11th Century

I am frequently asked the following questions and I openly admit to struggle to answer them adequately – the negative side of being a generalist dealer (constantly buying old attic finds and selling oddments from same), as opposed to being a specialist numismatic expert like so many of my much more knowledgeable customers. Who ordered…

King John Irish farthing, Dublin mint

Collecting medieval Irish coins

One of the more difficult aspects of coin collecting is the language barrier one encounters when trying to decipher the legends (text around the edges) of coins. Very few of us speak Latin and truncated Latin still appears on British coins today. As we all know, British coins circulated alongside Irish coins in this country…