1/2 Penny Suffolk - Ipswich / J. Conder

James Conder was himself a draper in Ipswich, but his real obsession was tokens. He became the first systematic cataloguer of 18th-century British provincial tokens, publishing his landmark work in 1798 — meaning this piece was struck while he was actively assembling the very collection that would define the field. Issuing a token bearing your own name while simultaneously writing the definitive reference on such tokens is either audacious or simply practical; Conder was probably both.

The 1794 date places it in the heart of the "token mania" period, when a chronic shortage of regal copper coinage forced tradesmen across Britain to produce their own halfpennies. Conder's Ipswich pieces are documented under DH#35 in Dalton & Hamer.