1/2 Penny Staffordshire – Stafford / W. Horton

This is a Staffordshire trade token, issued during the acute small-change shortage of the 1790s that followed the Royal Mint's near-total withdrawal from copper coinage production after 1775. With no regal halfpennies entering circulation, merchants and manufacturers across Britain commissioned their own tokens to keep commerce moving. W. Horton of Stafford was one of hundreds of provincial traders who did so, likely through one of the Birmingham die-sinkers who dominated the trade token industry during this period — Draper, Westwood, and Skidmore among the most prolific.

DH#20 in Dalton and Hamer's reference places this among the documented Staffordshire pieces, though the relative obscurity of Horton himself makes the issuing business difficult to trace with precision.