Penny of Offa
757–796 ・ silver ・ 8th century ・ Kingdom of Mercia
The thin, broad silver coin that Offa, king of Mercia, brought in on the model of the Carolingian silver reform — the penny. On this piece the legend OFFA REX can be read plainly. Two hundred and forty of them from a pound weight of silver. That way of counting went on, as the £sd system of one pound = twenty shillings = 240 pence, being the reckoning of this island for some 1,200 years. The pound was born not as a coin but as the name of a weight and a reckoning. It is, quite literally, the starting point of the route of the pound.