Obverse:

ÆÐELSTAN REX TO BRIT. Small cross, with bar and crescent with pellets in field.

Reverse:

REGNALD MO EFORPIC. Small cross.

Small surface hairline around the top of the inner circle, which is as struck, extremely fine, toned and very rare. This coin clearly features the typical York die cutting style of this issue, with the L in the moneyer's name, REGNALD taking the form of an inverted T and, by contrast, the T in BRIT the form of an inverted L.

These dies are not represented in the EMC or SCBI, which is unsurprising, as Dolley and van der Meer noted "Regnald appears to have been an extremely prolific moneyer… Alone of the York moneyers he would seem to have coined on so lavish a scale, and it is symptomatic of his large output that neither of the dies he employed for striking the Sudeley Castle coin is represented among the pennies, fourteen in all, of this moneyer and type which are in the British Museum".

This wide variety in dies are more likely to have been the result of Regnald, for most part, acting as an overlord moneyer, as suggested by Blunt, with others who were nameless working under him. The variation in symbols within the obverse fields of these issues may have served to identify the work of the individuals, functioning as a kind of early privy mark. In the case of this particular coin, the symbols of both bar and crescent with pellets appears to be a very rare, visually neat and interesting.

Ex L. Park Collection, Spink Auction, 31 Mar 2023, Lot 7521 (Realised £4,166 Inc. Bp. & Import) "with a most pleasing cabinet tone and uniformly struck, extremely fine and very rare, unlisted on EMC".

Ex York Coins, Ref. H5428 - $5,495 "toned, good extremely fine, rare".

For further reading see:

R. Dolley. & G. van der Meer. (1958). 'A Group of Anglo-Saxon Pence at Sudeley Castle'. The Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Royal Numismatic Society, Volume 18, page 124.

C.E. Blunt. (1974) 'The Coinage of Athelstan, 924-939, A Survey' British Numismatic Journal, Volume 42, page 35-158.