1/2 Penny Angusshire - Brechin / Smith and Wilson's

Smith and Wilson were linen manufacturers operating in Brechin, a small mill town in Angus whose textile trade ran on small change that the Royal Mint consistently failed to supply. The chronic copper shortage of the late eighteenth century pushed dozens of British merchants into striking their own tradesman's tokens — this piece belongs to that wave, issued just after the Copper Coinage Act of 1799 was supposed to have solved the problem but before Boulton's Soho Mint could meet actual demand.

Dalton and Hamer catalog this type as DH#9, placing it among the scarcer Angus provincial issues.