The purpose of this website is to provide information on the very rarest (i.e. fewer than around 25 known specimens) of English bronze* currency pennies dated 1860 to 1970, in terms of providing photographs where possible and also details of when specimens of each variety have come to market in the last few years, in order to give some idea of rarity to interested collectors. Rarity of these varieties is expressed using the notations quoted in Freeman’s book (see below and the Rarest Penny Listing page). I have included a few varieties of Proof penny where I think that the particular die-pairing is of major interest. As this website builds up, some of the rarest pennies are proving slightly less scarce than previously thought.
I am grateful to the various auction houses who provide such high quality images of their coins as a guide to potential buyers and which I have used to build this website. They include Spink, Dix, Noonan & Webb, London Coins, Baldwins, Heritage, Lockdales and many others.
In the 2003 edition of his book “The Early British Bronze ‘Bun’ Pennies 1860 to 1865 and their Varieties”, John Jerrams published a census (as of September 2001) of the rarest early pennies and I have included his population figures as of that date for interest. I have not attempted to cross reference his numbers against mine as there is no way of identifying the coins in his census and so I have only included examples where I have seen photographic evidence.
I should like to invite fellow collectors to let me know of further examples, ideally with photographs and provenance, so that I can update this site and build up a view of the populations of these very rare coins.
Each variety is defined by its unique Freeman number or, if the variety was not known to Freeman, by its unique Gouby identifier (in the format BP9999AA where BP stands for Bronze Penny, 9999 is the date of issue and AA is a one or two digit suffix defined by Michael Gouby in his books on the subject). In some cases, a variety was not recorded by either of these gentlemen and only the relevant die pairing is shown, together with any other relevant details.
* Note: I have now decided to include some copper penny rarities, starting with Victoria (1839-1860).
For further details of the definition and description of bronze pennies, please refer to the important publications below:
- The Bronze Coinage of Great Britain by Michael Freeman
- The British Bronze Penny 1860 to 1970 by Michael Gouby
- The British Bronze Penny 1860 to 1901 (specialist edition) by Michael Gouby
- “The Early British Bronze ‘Bun’ Pennies 1860 to 1865 and their Varieties” by John Jerrams
Best wishes
Richard Sessions (rasessions@aol.com)