Philip Grierson - Coin Collection

Coin Collection

It was pure chance that first drew Grierson’s attention to numismatics. A visit to the family home at Christmas 1944 or shortly thereafter produced a bronze Byzantine coin from one of his father’s desk drawers. It was later identified as an issue in the name of the emperor Phocas, and inspired Grierson to visit Spink’s in London. There, he expressed no intention of ever becoming a serious collector, and wished only to purchase £5 of coins to serve as illustrative material in his lectures.

These good intentions did not last, and by the end of the next year he had 1,500 coins, and 3,500 by the end of 1946. Eventually his collection was to include over 20,000 specimens, worth several million pounds as a whole. It is the finest representative collection for medieval Europe in the world. Although it resided in the Fitzwilliam Museum for many years, his collection only passed to the museum upon his death, and was retained in his own name so as to facilitate the selling of old specimens and the purchase of superior ones.

Grierson was never especially wealthy, and only built the collection by spending most of his modest inheritance and two-thirds of his annual income as an academic on coins. It helped that he started collecting at a fortuitous time, when the London numismatic dealers were awash with material from the enormous collection of Lord Grantley. Wartime and post-war conditions meant that these coins were available at a fraction of their pre-war (and equivalent modern) price, with heavy restrictions on the activities of foreign purchasers. Grierson was a careful buyer, but could also be willing to spend significant amounts for particular coins, such as his famous and exceptionally rare portrait denier of Charlemagne. Later appointments to additional positions helped further his collection.

In 1982, Grierson arranged funding to begin a project aimed at publishing his (now very substantial) collection. Medieval European Coinage was initially envisaged as twelve volumes of definitive catalogue and text on the coinage of different parts of Europe. The first volume appeared in 1986, and discussed the coinage of all of western Europe up to the tenth century. It remains the standard catalogue and study of the period.