1/2 Penny Norfolk - Norwich / Bullen and Martins

Bullen & Martins operated as wholesale grocers in Norwich, and their 1794 halfpenny token belongs to the extraordinary wave of private copper coinage that flooded Britain after the Royal Mint's near-total failure to produce sufficient regal small change through the 1780s. By the early 1790s, Birmingham's Soho Mint under Matthew Boulton had become the dominant commercial producer of these tokens, supplying trade firms across the country with better-struck, heavier copper than anything the Crown was issuing.

Catalogued as DH#19 and Atkins#20, this piece sits within a well-documented Norwich series, though Bullen & Martins as a firm left little surviving commercial record beyond the token itself.