425, Lot: 701. Estimate $200. Sold for $155. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

FRANCE, Provincial. Normandie (duché). Robert II Courteheuse. 1087-1106. AR Denier (20mm, 0.93 g, 8h). Rouen or Bayeux mint. Riau–, moneyer. + NOR[MAN]NA, cross pattée; pellets in angles / RI/AV in two lines. Dumas Group D, pl. XXI, 17; Legros 372 corr. (letters on rev.); Duplessy, Féodales 32; Poey d'Avant –; cf. Roberts 3901-9 . VF for type, typical crude strike. Extremely rare, marked as ‘unique’ in Legros, four noted by Dumas (all in the BN).

From the BRN Collection, purchased from Andy Singer, June 2012.

This issue is from a large group of very rare moneyer-signed issues, where the obverse has the usual NORMANNA around a cross, but the reverse contains part of a name in two lines. These issues were the first Norman coins to contain such moneyer names, and it is thought that they were influenced by the issues of Norman England. The first of this particular moneyer's coinage was a single find in a hoard reported by V. Luneau ("Quelques deniers normands inédits du XIe siècle. Nouvelle trouvaille" in RN 1911). That coin was, as most Norman coins of the period, very poorly preserved, and Luneau read the reverse as "•PI/•AV?". Legros cited that example, which she thought was unique at the time of her work in 1984. However, Dumas' landmark article on Norman coinage in RN 1979 found a total of four examples, from three hoards, and the newer examples clarified the reading of the reverse as RI/AV.