1/2 Penny Regal Imitation - George III left, uniface

By the 1830s, the chronic shortage of authorized small change in British North America had spawned a cottage industry of "regal imitations" — privately struck tokens designed to pass alongside genuine British copper. This piece imitates the halfpenny coinage of George III, who had been dead for fifteen years by the time it was struck. The uniface format — blank on one side — points almost certainly to a struck counterfeit rather than a merchant token, produced cheaply and in quantity to exploit a currency vacuum the colonial authorities were slow to fill.