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1/2 Penny Warwickshire - Coventry / Kempson's
| Issuer | Peter Kempson (Birmingham) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1797 |
| Type | Emergency coin |
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|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse bears a finely engraved rendering of the Arms of Coventry within a heraldic shield, depicting an elephant and castle as the principal charge — the elephant shown in profile facing left, carrying a turreted castle on its back, standing on a ground line within the lower portion of the shield. Above the shield, a cat or leopard passant serves as the crest atop a wreath. The legend THE ARMS OF COVENTRY arcs around the upper and lateral periphery in raised lettering, with the date 1797 appearing in the lower portion of the field below the shield. The engraver's signature P. KEMPSON FECIT is incised at the base of the design, attesting to the workmanship of the Birmingham die-sinker. |
| Reverse script | Latin |
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| Additional information |
Peter Kempson was one of Birmingham's most prolific token issuers of the 1790s, producing series after series of halfpenny and penny tokens for towns across the Midlands and beyond — less as a public service than as a commercial venture, since the tokens were sold to collectors as much as they circulated. The Coventry pieces form part of a larger Warwickshire series he issued around 1797, a year when the chronic small-change shortage that had plagued Britain since the 1780s was finally being addressed by Matthew Boulton's Soho Mint cartwheel coinage, making Kempson's tokens already semi-obsolete on arrival.
The collector market was the real target. Kempson issued many of his tokens in multiple edge varieties specifically to drive completionist demand.