I bought an 1858/6 during the week, mainly because of the accompanying note written by Charles Wilson Peck, which I found quite interesting.
Members will know that the 1858/6 was neither recorded by Bramah (1929), or Peck (1964). It is a reasonably difficult coin to find, particularly in a better grade, but I have always found it rather surprising that neither of these authors recorded this variety. I do not regard it as very rare, and it is also a fairly obvious type once you see one ‘in the hand’.
Anyway, the letter from Peck (which I bought with the coin) was as attached, with my own yellow highlighting now added.
You will note that the letter is dated Nov’66, which is just over a year before Peck passed away, in April 1968.
Fortunately, I was also able to contact the seller of the coin, through ebay, and he replied as follows:-
“the coin had been in my possession since I bought it in 1966. It wasn’t listed as an overstrike but I noticed it and had it confirmed by Peck who was the leading authority of English copper at the time."
I think this letter is a nice bit of history, and it also contains a couple of interesting comments, for example Peck’s thoughts on minor date widths. I found it particularly interesting that he mentioned someone called Bressett, a name which I had not come across before. I now see that the American author, Kenneth Bressett wrote several editions of a book called ‘A Guide to English Coins’, starting in the early 1960’s (Peck was aware of the contents of the first edition).
This made me wonder if I could find the edition in which he may have first recorded the 1858/6. If anyone reading this has a later edition then perhaps you wouldn’t mind looking to see if the 1858/6 penny has been noted.
P.S. £10 in 1966 is now worth £230!