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1/2 Penny Middlesex - Richardson's / Fortune
| Issuer | Richardson, Goodluck & Co. |
|---|---|
| Year | 1795 |
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| Shape | Round |
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|---|---|
| Obverse script | Latin |
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| Reverse description | The reverse is entirely devoted to a bold advertising text legend filling the field, reading in five lines: RICHARDSON GOODLUCK & Co / No / 12807 / THE LAST PRIZE OF / £30 000 / SHARED / SOLD IN SIXTEENTHS. A continuous circumferential legend AT THE OFFICES OF ... WAS SOLD IN SIXTEENTHS encircles the field between an inner beaded border and the outer toothed rim. The design serves as a trade advertisement for the lottery office of Richardson, Goodluck & Co., boasting of a £30,000 prize sold in shared sixteenth-parts, a common practice among Georgian lottery contractors. |
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| Additional information |
Richardson, Goodluck & Co. were London merchants who issued this token during the great provincial copper famine of the 1780s–90s, when the Royal Mint's near-total neglect of small denomination coinage left tradesmen across Britain manufacturing their own. The firm's name — already containing the word "Goodluck" — made the Fortune motif an obvious choice, and the pairing would have read as a deliberate piece of self-promotion to anyone handling the piece in trade.
Middlesex tokens of this period were often struck by Obadiah Westwood or Thomas Wyon's shops in Birmingham and London respectively, though attribution of individual dies remains contested among specialists.