1/2 Penny Hampshire - Portsmouth / Thomas Sharp

Thomas Sharp was a Portsmouth ironmonger who issued this token during the acute small-change shortage of the 1790s, when the Royal Mint had effectively abandoned copper coinage for decades. Provincial traders across Britain filled the vacuum themselves, commissioning tokens from commercial diesinkers — a practice tolerated rather than sanctioned. Sharp's issue is catalogued under Dalton & Hamer 65 and Atkins 42, placing it firmly within the documented Hampshire series rather than among the anonymous or speculative pieces that complicate attribution elsewhere in the trade token literature.