Not so much gold, but silver pennies were a significant part of the mid-late Anglo-Saxon economy, which was monetised to a far greater extent than is commonly thought. The numismatic record for Anglo-Saxon England is particularly extensive for the period, and becomes particularly dense from the mid-9th century onwards. As both symbols of royal authority and elements of trade, English coinage was a constant throughout the period, and remarkable in Europe for its consistently high silver content and quality.

The corpus of numismatic evidence in England (visible through both the Syllogue of English Medieval Coinage and the Portable Antiquities Scheme) suggest that the coinage was in everyday use by the regular population, and not just an elite item. While the majority of extant artefacts stem from hoards, as is to be expected, a significant number are 'single finds' - individual artefacts presumed to have been lost or discarded through everyday activity rather than purposefully deposited. In numismatic cases, these tend to indicate a coin fallen from a pocket along a road, accidentally dropped at a market or otherwise accidentally lost. At the same time, a significant number of 'hoard' finds are quite small - maybe two or three coins - which could also represent a dropped or stolen purse. The finds pattern mapped across the country show that these finds are not clustered just at elite sites or major trade hubs - although hoards are most common at burhs and wics - but are distributed widely throughout villages and smaller settlements, as well as along smaller roads.

Law codes such as Æthelstan's ~826 "Grately II" code attempt to set prices for certain items which illustrate the value of currency in everyday commerce. Cows, for example, were set at 20d, sheep at 6d. This doesn't necessarily mean that coinage was bound to be used - barter almost certainly remained a siginificant part of the economy and this code served to provide a unified set of equivalent values - but showed that coinage could be expected to play an active role in everyday trading. The coinage itself was also often designed with grooves on the obverse so that it could be readily split into halfpenny and farthing values, to be more readily used in everyday low-value transactions.