1/2 Penny Sussex – Brighton / Prince of Wales

Part of the flood of provincial copper tokens that filled Britain's small-change vacuum in the 1790s, when the Royal Mint had effectively abandoned copper coinage for decades. The shortage was acute enough that manufacturers, tradesmen, and speculators issued their own halfpennies by the millions — legally tolerated, widely circulated, and eventually suppressed by the Coinage Act of 1817.

The Brighton connection ties this piece to the town's sudden fashionability after the Prince of Wales began visiting in 1783, a patronage that transformed a modest fishing village into a resort destination within a single decade.