1/2 Penny Lothian - Edinburgh / Hutchison's

Hutchison's token was issued during the acute small-change famine of the early 1790s, when the Royal Mint's chronic underproduction of regal copper left Scottish traders and manufacturers forced to commission their own circulating pieces from private diesinkers. Edinburgh's merchant community was among the most active in Britain in filling that void. The Dalton-Hamer reference assigns this piece as DH#50, placing it firmly within the documented Edinburgh commercial token sequence rather than among the many fly-by-night provincial issues of the same decade.