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1/2 Penny Oliver Cromwell - South Wales
| Issuer | United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Year | |
| Type | Emergency coin |
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| Reverse description | A crowned Irish harp occupies the central field, surmounted by a stylized royal crown. The harp is depicted with multiple strings and a decorative forepillar, in the traditional heraldic manner associated with Ireland. The legend SOUTH WALES arcs around the periphery, deliberately combining incongruous imagery and legend as typical of evasion tokens intended to circumvent contemporary coinage laws. |
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| Edge | Plain |
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| Additional information |
This is a 17th-century trade token, not a regal issue — Cromwell's government never produced official halfpenny coinage, leaving a vacuum filled by thousands of private copper tokens struck by merchants and tradesmen across England and Wales. The "South Wales" attribution places this piece within a broader Welsh token tradition catalogued by James Atkins in his 1892 reference work on tradesmen's tokens. Atkins 414 is a well-documented type, though surviving examples vary considerably in sharpness owing to the crude dies typical of provincial token production of the Interregnum period.