1708E Sixpence ESC ID help

[Kipster]

Afternoon,

Just received this 1708E* sixpence in the post, and hoping someone can help ID this please. Looking in ESC, it looks like it's 1471, but this makes mention of (4? strings), whereas this coin has 6. There looks like a definite 8 over 7 to me and the legend reads as per 1471, but would be grateful if someone with a better eye could confirm please.

It definitely looks cleaned though.

Grateful as always.

[Rob]

Go with your original attribution. Bull does say 4?, so presumably the example he examined was fairly dire. Don't lose any sleep over the number of strings as they  can easily get filled. My 1697B halfcrown for example has 1 & 1/2 harp strings, and I'm absolutely certain the die didn't start out with that number.

Another reason for not getting too attached to the number of harp strings is that Jackson-Kent did a 10 year study from 1955-1965 on the harp strings of William III coins and concluded at the end of 10 years that you couldn't conclude anything. Just take the number of strings indicated by Bull to be what he saw and nothing more. He didn't see every coin, so all options are available.

[Kipster]

17 minutes ago, Rob said:

Go with your original attribution. Bull does say 4?, so presumably the example he examined was fairly dire. Don't lose any sleep over the number of strings as they  can easily get filled. My 1697B halfcrown for example has 1 & 1/2 harp strings, and I'm absolutely certain the die didn't start out with that number.

Another reason for not getting too attached to the number of harp strings is that Jackson-Kent did a 10 year study from 1955-1965 on the harp strings of William III coins and concluded at the end of 10 years that you couldn't conclude anything. Just take the number of strings indicated by Bull to be what he saw and nothing more. He didn't see every coin, so all options are available.

That's great, thank you Rob. I appreciate it.