1⁄50 Dollar - George IV Pattern

The 1823 British West Indies coinage patterns were produced in London at the direction of the Colonial Office, which was wrestling with a chronic shortage of small change across the Caribbean colonies — a problem made worse by the widespread counterfeiting of local currency and the refusal of Spanish colonial coins to circulate at predictable values. A 1/50 dollar denomination was proposed as part of a rationalized decimal system intended to replace the chaotic mix of cut and plugged coins then passing as currency.

The scheme was never adopted. Colonial merchants and planters resisted the change, and the patterns remained just that.