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1 Dollar Sierra Leone Company, type '1'

Issuer Sierra Leone Company
Year 1791
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Currency Dollar (1791-1830)
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Reverse lettering ONE DOLLAR PIECE 1 1 1791
Edge Plain
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Additional information

The Sierra Leone Company — a British abolitionist venture chartered in 1792 to establish a free Black settlement at Freetown — struck this dollar in 1791 as a practical necessity. The colony had no reliable medium of exchange, and Spanish milled dollars, while common in Atlantic trade, were in short supply locally. The Company commissioned this piece to circulate among settlers, many of them formerly enslaved Black Loyalists relocated from Nova Scotia.

The 'type 1' designation distinguishes this from a subsequent issue; both are rare, but this earlier striking sees fewer examples surface at auction. KM#7 is one of the more historically loaded entries in any West African numismatic sequence.