in the collection of

Timothy D. Cook

A Brief Introduction

Welcome to my virtual coin cabinet. With the advent of computers and technology, I am now able to view and enjoy my collection in a new and different way. I am also now able to share my collection with others, which was something I was not able to do before. I live in a remote area of Montana which has few people, and even fewer coin collectors, especially those who would appreciate my collection. In addition the collection is kept in a bank vault some distance from my home. This has become frustrating in that I have not been able to view my collection as much as I would like. Therefore, I have set up this site as a way for myself and for others who like English hammered coins to see my collection.

The collection I think is not particularly big or important. It is just an average collection with a few good coins here and there. The collection has taken me a little over forty years to build at this point, and is expanding as time and money permits. What has really been fun lately is that my children are asking more questions about the collection and what I do with it. I hope this will lead them to collect and to have as many years of learning and fun as I have had.

I am what if commonly called an incurable collector. It is as if collecting has been hardwired into me. I have several different collections ranging from antique paper clips to sea shells to toy trains. However, the one collection that has been with me the longest and has given me the greatest joy is coin collecting. My first experience with coin collecting came from my father and his father. While both were not real serious collectors, they both collected and encouraged me to collect. When I was around ten or so I joined the local coin club, the Gate City Coin and Stamp Club of Glendive, Montana. The club was composed mostly of retired railroaders; in fact, I think I was the only member younger than sixty! Almost exclusively American coins were discussed and collected by the members. We had a yearly coin show, which for the size of the town was quite large. By the time I was eighteen, I was the past president of the club.

One of the members, Ed Wolters, took me under his wing and with much patience showed me some of the finer points of collecting, such as grading. Ed was also the person who opened up my eyes to coins from around the world. He was perhaps the only collector in the club who actively bought world coins. While not a major part of his collection, he was still interested in world coins and actively collected them. It was in his collection that I saw my first English hammered coins. There were two of them, each a penny, one from Henry III and one from Edward I. That was all it took; I was hooked big time. Over the next few years, I proceeded to sell off my American coins and buy English hammered.

Since I started collecting English hammered, it has been more difficult finding people from whom I could learn about the coins. After all the dominant areas collected in this county, and certainly Montana, are American coins, which is as it should be. Probably the next big area is ancient as well as the many folks who collect Canadian and the various modern coins of other countries. So actually meeting a person who is interested in hammered coins is something you do not come across every day. I was lucky enough though to cross paths with two people who were more than patient and generous with their time. The first is Allan Davisson, a major American dealer in English and ancient coins. The second was Wilfrid Slayter who was for many years the secretary of the British Numismatic Society. Both answered what were probably in some cases pretty silly questions. Nevertheless, each answered all of my questions, and as an added bonus suggested books and articles for me to read. One little highlight of my early collecting was that I was the subject of a cover story in World Coin News published on 14 May 1985.

Learning about the English hammered series has been a bit daunting for me. There are so few books in the libraries here on coins in general and on hammered in particular. That has meant that I have had to build my own library. The library is not all inclusive of books on the subject, but it does allow me to do some very basic research. Just as daunting has been finding dealers from which to buy coins to build the collection. The few coin dealers that there are here in Montana do not deal in hammered. Therefore, I have had to buy mostly from dealers many miles away. I have bought coins from a number of coin dealers over the years. Some I still buy from, some retired and sadly some have passed away. Bet of all I can say that I have not had one single bad experience from any of them. So now, some forty plus years after I bought my first hammered coin I am still collecting and learning.

How to use this site

This site should be fairly straightforward. I have also tried to keep things simple and easy for your browser to load. All coins have been photographed and are NOT presented proprotionally or to scale. As you go through the site you will see reference to "S#'s" and "N#'s" these refer to Seaby/Spink and North numbers from either of the standard reference books on the subject; Standard Catalogue of British Coins(S#) and English Hammered Coinage(N#).

The site has three areas, each I hope you will find useful. The first is the collection itself. Each coin will not only have a picture, but also reference citations and in some cases a few notes. The coins on the site follow the same basic organization as the collection itself. The second area that might be of interest will be the listing of the books in my personal library. This will not follow standard citation rules that you would use for a publication or scholarly work, but it should allow anyone to find the same book in a library or other resource. The library is broken down in to various sections such as one for the Sylloge series, auction catalogues, etc. The last area of the site is a links page. These links are sites that I have come across in my web surfing. Those interested in hammered coinage will probably find something interesting on these sites. There is also a page with a few miscellaneous coins that I have picked up over the years. They do not fit into the regular collection but are somewhat interesting. If after you have explored this site, you have any thoughts you might like to share or suggestions to improve the site please contact me.

You may freely link to this site, however I ask that you only link to the welcome page at this URL: http://www.englishhammered.com

I want to thank those individuals who have written such kind words on my guestbook and sent such wonderful emails. Some have said that they have used the site to help in identifying their coins. I would like to suggest that you also look at the site for the EMC/Sylloge. That site allows for the searching of all published volumes in the SCBI serries as well as the Early Midieval Coin database. There you will find many more coins and much better images. Now that is not to say not to come and look at my site, please keep on visiting, I just want to point out a great resource for research.

This site has undergone a major update during 2021 and 2022. All coins have been rephotographed. I have endevored to make as many corrections as I could find with regards to attribution, provenance, incorrect pictures and anything else I could find. I am certain that there are still errors and mistakes on the site. If you find any please let me know.

The Collection

As I stated earlier the collection has taken me now a little over forty years to assemble and now total over 1,500 coins. There are some very strong areas and some very weak areas. Just as there are also some coins I am very proud of, there are some I would rather not admit to. Over the years, I have focused on a few periods, although you will find coins from other periods as well. Those areas of concentration have been Anglo Saxon, Henry VI and to lesser extent Edward I. The collection has been assembled on a very tight budget so you are not going to see many spectacular coins here. What you will see are coins that have what I like to call character. They are a bit harder to attribute but that makes them more fun. As you can see below the collection is arranged by historical period. There will be a brief introduction on some of the links below. Again please remember that each of the coins is not shown proprotionally or to scale. Please be aware that the photographs were done by a pure amateur and are not of the highest quality. If you have any questions about the coins or think that I have miss-attributed one please contact me.

Sign my guestook please!

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