Tealby Penny

The Tealby Penny is a hammered silver penny of King Henry II of England, and the example shown carries a crowned facing bust of the king on the obverse with a voided cross and small crosslets on the reverse. This was the single substantive coinage of Henry II's early reign and served as the everyday money of England for roughly two decades.

The type takes its popular name from the great hoard of these coins unearthed at Tealby in Lincolnshire in 1807. Numismatists more formally call it the Cross-and-Crosslets coinage after the reverse design, a plain voided cross with a small cross or crosslet set in each angle. Tealby pennies are famous for their frequently crude striking, so well-centered, fully legible examples are prized by collectors.

Henry II reigned from 1154 to 1189 and founded the Plantagenet dynasty, inheriting a realm whose coinage had been debased and disrupted during the civil war of Stephen's reign known as the Anarchy. In 1158 he introduced a reformed penny of good silver, the Cross-and-Crosslets or Tealby type, struck to restore confidence in the currency across a wide network of provincial and royal mints.

The coinage was produced from about 1158 until it was replaced by the Short Cross penny in 1180. Each coin named its moneyer and mint in the reverse legend, continuing the long English practice of accountability for weight and fineness. Despite the good metal, the dies and striking were often careless, and the type is remembered as much for its ragged workmanship as for its role in stabilizing English money after the Anarchy.

Look for a small, thin, hand-struck silver coin, broadly in the range of about 18-21 mm across and light in the hand, usually with an irregular outline and often weakly or unevenly struck. The obverse shows a crowned bust of the king, typically facing, holding a scepter, surrounded by a Latin legend naming Henry, generally a form of HENRICVS REX (Henry, King).

The reverse is built around a voided cross that extends to or near the edge, with a small cross or crosslet placed in each of the four angles, encircled by a legend giving the moneyer's name and the mint town rather than a date. Because Tealby pennies carry no year, the crown-and-bust style, the cross-and-crosslets reverse, and the legends are the keys to attribution. Wear and weak striking commonly leave the portrait and parts of the legend flat or off the flan.

Tealby pennies survive in reasonable numbers thanks to large hoards such as the Tealby find, so value is driven mainly by strike quality, completeness of the legends, mint, moneyer, and overall condition. Because the type is so often crudely or partially struck, coins with a clear crowned portrait, full round flan, and legible mint and moneyer names carry a strong premium over the many ragged, off-center examples.

Common mints and heavily worn or clipped pieces are the most affordable, while scarcer mints and moneyers and sharply struck coins bring considerably more. As with all early hammered silver, cracks, chips, bending, and harsh cleaning reduce value, and reproductions exist. Treat any single figure as approximate and check recent auction results and expert opinion before buying or selling.