[Extract from the day-book of Marchant & Sons, dealers in coins and medals, of Great Russell Street. Purchases, 1942. The entry and one later addition.]
11 June 1942. Bt. of a gentleman, not wishing his name used, introduced by Mr Sallis —
Three silver pennies, Anglo-Saxon, Æthelred II, all three in poor state and much encrusted, the reverses of two not to be read at all.
Vendor states they came to him by descent and he has no papers for them. Told him plainly that without papers they are worth little and he said he understood that and would take what they would fetch.
Paid £2 10s. the three.
Offered to the Museum by post 19th inst.; declined, no interest in specimens without provenance.
[in a later hand, pencil, at the foot of the page:]
The second of these three — cleaned here, Aug. 1943, at Mr Sallis's asking — BRVNSTAN ON WRÆNFLD, and there is no such mint in the books. Sold it 1944 to Ld. Cottesmore for four guineas as a curiosity of doubtful reading.
See Num. Chron. 1951, p. 212, where it is published as unique and the finding place given as unknown.
Two pounds ten the three. I have been thirty-one years in this trade.