As I was searching through one of my favorite seller's inventories of hammered coins of early England, I noticed that a good deal of early (Viking era) coins had what are referred to as "peck marks". I am wondering what the cause and purpose of this was? For those who haven't seen this before, they look like small digs in the surface of a silver penny (here's an example from York Coins-http://www.yorkcoins.com/images/h970x2.jpg) almost looks like a small knife had been poked into the surface several times.I was just curious if anyone had info on how these were made, and why?Thanks in advance.
I'm just taking a stab at this, but I'm wondering if these might be test marks made by merchants. Maybe the merchant used a knife or some other sharp instrument to either check authenticity, or purity of the silver (or other ores used). A merchant had to be careful that they weren't getting ripped off when a transaction was made so they had to check to see what's was being passed off to them. Again this is just a guess. Anyone else is free to correct me if I'm wrong. ~Daniel.
The Vikings, however, only saw the coin for its silver content and *pecked* or *bent* it to find out how soft, and therefore how pure it was.
Zantetsuken is correct, a number of references refer to ancient coins having bankers peck marks. As for the later Viking coins:The small gouges on the reverse of the coin are known as "peck" marks and were made with a knife to test the purity of the silver. The Anglo-Saxons would have had no need to do this, as the bust of Æthelred on the coin was a royal guarantee of its value: this coin could be exchanged for a penny worth of goods. The Vikings, however, only saw the coin for its silver content and *pecked* or *bent* it to find out how soft, and therefore how pure it was.
I guess I should give the link to the page my quote came from:http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/26/messages/257.html