1/2 Penny Payable by Miles W. White

Miles W. White operated as a merchant in Halifax, Nova Scotia, during the early nineteenth century, when acute copper small-change shortages forced numerous Canadian merchants to commission their own token issues. The British government's chronic failure to supply adequate regal coinage to the colonies left commerce dependent on private and semi-official tokens for decades, and Nova Scotia was no exception.

Breton 890 is one of several Nova Scotia merchant tokens catalogued in Breton's 1894 reference — the foundational work for Canadian colonial token collecting.