1/2 Groat - Robert III Heavy Coinage, 1st Issue

Robert III's coinage is poorly understood relative to his reign — a king so ineffectual by his own admission that he requested burial in a dunghill. The Heavy Coinage designation reflects a period before successive debasements eroded Scottish silver content through the early fifteenth century, making these earlier issues structurally distinct from what followed. The Edinburgh mint was the dominant Scottish striking facility at this date, though output was modest by English contemporary standards.

Sp#5172 places this within Burns and Stevenson's classification framework. Attribution of individual specimens between Robert II and Robert III can be genuinely contested without supporting die study.