1/2 Penny Hampshire - Petersfield / Holland and Andrews

Petersfield's late eighteenth-century token trade was dominated by a handful of local merchants who stepped in after the chronic small-change shortage of the 1780s and 1790s left commerce nearly impossible at the retail level. Holland and Andrews were among them, issuing this halfpenny under the broad permission granted by the Conder token boom — a private monetary stopgap that the Royal Mint was too slow and too proud to address itself. Parliament finally cracked down with the Act of 1817, rendering the entire class obsolete.