English Patterns
The first English coin we can surely identify is a groat, originally worth fourpence. This piece, an example of which was illustrated and sold in the Dodsley Cuff sale of the mid-19th century, had crowns in place of the usual three pellets in each quarter of the reverse.
Patterns are particularly identifiable and exist in larger numbers from the reign of Elizabeth I onwards. The experimental base metal issues of all coinage prior to the mid-18th century have been well preserved.
Boulton's mint in Soho produced prodigious quantities of patterns, which were supplemented by Taylor some fifty or so years later from the same dies.
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—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)