Tudor & Stuart mintmark dater
A mintmark (or “initial mark”) is a small heraldic device placed at the start of the obverse legend on UK hammered silver. From Edward III (1327) onwards, English mintmarks change every one to three years, so a legible mark dates a coin to a tight year window even when the date itself is worn. Pick a mark below to see which monarch used it, the years it was current, the mints that issued it, and a worked example.
How the dater works
The full dater is an interactive grid of every documented mintmark on UK hammered silver from Edward III (1327) to Charles II (1685) plus selected milled-coinage marks through Victoria’s reign. You can filter by reign, search by name (“plume”, “anchor”, “Aberystwyth”), or reverse-look-up by year — type 1642 and the grid filters to every mark current in that year.
Click any mintmark to open a detail panel with the years it was current, the issuing mints, whether the mark pins mint attribution or needs disambiguation (bust style + date), and a worked-example coin description. Over 130 marks indexed.
Unlock the full dater on Basic
£1.99 / month for the full Basic toolkit — mintmark dater, grading gallery (already free), Treasure Act wizard (already free), 100 identifications a month, multiple photos per find, live session tracking and the full collection diary.
See pricingWilliam I through Edward II (1066–1327) did NOT use symbol mintmarks. Coins of these reigns were attributed by reading the mint place name and moneyer’s name in the reverse legend. If you see “a symbol next to the cross” on a Short Cross or Long Cross penny it is almost certainly (a) a class-diagnostic pellet pattern, (b) a moneyer’s privy mark, or (c) wear or encrustation — not a mintmark in the post-1327 sense.
Source: PSDetecting.com mintmark library (the canonical online reference), cross-checked against Spink’s annual Coins of England. For the full identification methodology see the reference library.