Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- c.1990 (Creation)
Level of description
Extent and medium
3 items, 1 paper and 2 photographic material
Context area
Name of creator
Administrative history
Founded by Albert Henry Baldwin in 1872, incorporated as a private limited company in 1920, and still existing today. A H Baldwin was joined by his son Percy in 1901 at their first shop in London and later by his other two sons Fred and Roy. When the business outgrew the capacity of their store fronts, A H Baldwin & Sons (also known as Baldwin's) migrated to the locations indicated under 'places'. A H Baldwin & Sons remains a dominant trader and dealer of historic coins, medals, tokens, books and banknotes.
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
Unsigned letter on A H Baldwin & Sons letterhead, in manuscript, single page, undated but concerning a coin that was found in 1988, sending Ian [Stewart] polaroid photographs of a coin [of King Offa] for cataloguing. The coin was "found near Norwich with an Abbasid dinar AH 147 = AD764 (allegedly)". The sender says that the coin is similar to Blunt 71, "very fragile, with a surface chip, 1.183g. There is a notation below that begins with something that looks like an upper-case "P" followed by a date: "23/2/90".
The attachments (a-b) consist in the polaroid photographs of the coin.
The coin appears to be the same as one recorded in 1992 in the Fitzwilliam Museum's digital Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds (EMC) as having been found near Acle [in the Norfolk broads, between Norwich and Great Yarmouth] in November 1988, though the recorded weight (1.17g) is very slightly lower than that reported in the letter (https://emc.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/full-record/19920255). The EMC database appears to contain no record of the Abbasid dinar reportedly found with the coin of Offa.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Conditions governing reproduction
Language of material
Script of material
Language and script notes
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Finding aids
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Related units of description
For the record of the discovery of this coin in the Fitzwilliam Museum's digital Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds, see https://emc.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/full-record/19920255