1/2 Penny Dorset - Sherborne / Pretor, Pew and Co.

Sherborne's late eighteenth-century trade token issues emerged from the same commercial pressures that drove token production across provincial England in the 1780s and 1790s — a chronic shortage of regal small change that the Royal Mint had effectively abandoned. Pretor, Pew and Whitty were mercers operating in Sherborne, and their tokens circulated as functional small change within the local trading community rather than as any kind of promotional novelty.

The Conder token series from Dorset is relatively thin, making Sherborne issues among the more geographically specific survivals from the county.