This is a provincial copper halfpenny issued under the broad umbrella of eighteenth-century trade tokens, a category that exploded in Britain precisely because the Royal Mint had catastrophically neglected small-denomination coinage for decades. By the 1770s, genuine regal halfpennies and farthings were so scarce in circulation that merchants, mine operators, and industrialists began striking their own. The Cornwall series specifically served the copper and tin mining communities of the southwest, where wages needed to be paid in small change that simply did not exist in sufficient quantity from official sources.
Atkins 76 places this piece within a documented sequence — not a forgery, but an acknowledged gap-filler tolerated by authorities who had no practical alternative.
This is a provincial copper halfpenny issued under the broad umbrella of eighteenth-century trade tokens, a category that exploded in Britain precisely because the Royal Mint had catastrophically neglected small-denomination coinage for decades. By the 1770s, genuine regal halfpennies and farthings were so scarce in circulation that merchants, mine operators, and industrialists began striking their own. The Cornwall series specifically served the copper and tin mining communities of the southwest, where wages needed to be paid in small change that simply did not exist in sufficient quantity from official sources.
Atkins 76 places this piece within a documented sequence — not a forgery, but an acknowledged gap-filler tolerated by authorities who had no practical alternative.