Eadgar (959-975), Penny, Bust Crowned type, Neatishead?, Leofinc, +eadgar rex around...

A Penny of ‘Neatishead’ Eadgar (959-975), Penny, Bust Crowned type, Neatishead?, Leofinc, +eadgar rex around crowned and draped bust of East Anglia style right, rev. + leofine moneta nt, small cross, 1.42g/9h (CTCE –; cf. Stack 489; N 751, this moneyer not listed for the mint; S 1139). Neatly struck on a full round flan from an obverse die of superb fluid style, almost extremely fine and extremely rare £3,000-£4,000 --- Provenance: Found near Thetford in 2023 Blunt, Lyon and Stewart (CTCE, p.195) recorded two pennies signed by the moneyer Boge with unusual reverse legends; one reading moneta neat, and the other moneta n. The former was discovered just seven miles from the Norfolk village of Neatishead. To this we can add a halfpenny in the Fitzwilliam Collection, found near Narborough with the reading [–]oneta ne[-] and the current specimen. All four coins are quite clearly linked together on the basis of style and, where known, find spot. The authors of CTCE, following an earlier article by Christopher Blunt, acknowledged the possibility that neat was to be recognised as mint signature for Neatishead, but also raised the alternative that these letters represent ‘a slightly blundered repetition of the final letters of Moneta’. The new expanded corpus is helpful here; the signature on all four pennies begins with the letter N, and it is difficult to accept that this consistency was the result of random blundering. Add to this the fact that the dies are otherwise quite literate and well produced, and it seems clear that we should take the final letters at face value; a mint signature of neat, variously abbreviated. The signature on the current coin, ‘nt’ appears to be a contraction made by omitting vowels, an unusual arrangement but one certainly evidenced in the late Saxon coinage (cf. BEH Æthelred II 639, 3162, 3451, 3465). As to the suitability of Neatishead to be a candidate for a Anglo-Saxon minting place we may return to Blunt’s note (SNC September 1985). where it is concluded that ‘neat is both an acceptable form for Neatishead and one that is more probable than the other possible candidates.’