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1/2 Penny Gregory III Pon - Bel * Ona
| Issuer | United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Year | 1777 |
| Type | Emergency coin |
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|---|---|
| Obverse script | Latin |
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| Reverse description | A seated female figure, representing Britannia, shown to the left in the manner of contemporary British halfpenny coinage, holding a trident in her right hand and resting her left arm upon a shield. The date 1777 appears in the exergue below the figure. The peripheral legend BEL*ONA flanks the figure, a deliberate misspelling of BRITANNIA employed to evade the legal prohibition on counterfeiting regal coinage. A toothed border encircles the reverse field. |
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| Additional information |
The "Pon - Bel * Ona" pieces are 18th-century British trade tokens, not official Royal Mint issues — they circulated to fill the chronic shortage of small change that plagued Britain throughout the 1770s and beyond, a gap the government was notably slow to address. The Atkins reference places this among the documented provincial copper tokens of the period, catalogued by James Atkins in his 1892 work on tradesmen's tokens.
The issuer "Gregory III" remains difficult to pin to a single documented tradesman without corroborating evidence from trade directories of the period.