See full images — free registration
Continue with Google — it's free or register with email

1 Dollar Sierra Leone Company, type '100'

Issuer Sierra Leone Company
Year 1791
Type Log in to see details
Value Log in to see details
Currency Dollar (1791-1830)
Composition Log in to see details
Weight Log in to see details
Diameter Log in to see details
Thickness Log in to see details
Shape Log in to see details
Technique Log in to see details
Orientation Log in to see details
Engraver(s) Log in to see details
In circulation to Log in to see details
Reference(s) Log in to see details
Obverse description Log in to see details
Obverse script Latin
Obverse lettering SIERRA LEONE COMPANY AFRICA
Reverse description Log in to see details
Reverse script Log in to see details
Reverse lettering Log in to see details
Edge Log in to see details
Mint Log in to see details
Mintage Log in to see details
Additional information

The Sierra Leone Company was a British abolitionist venture chartered in 1792 to govern the Province of Freedom settlement at Freetown, but this dollar was struck in 1791 — the year before the charter — when the enterprise was still operating under its predecessor, the St. George's Bay Company. The coins were intended to provide a stable local currency for a colony populated largely by Black Loyalists evacuated from Nova Scotia and liberated Africans, a population for whom British coinage was both scarce and practically useless in daily trade.

The KM#6 designation covers what is effectively a pattern-adjacent issue; surviving examples are rare in any condition, and the .902 fineness closely mirrors contemporary Spanish milled dollar standards — almost certainly deliberate, to encourage acceptance alongside the pieces of eight already circulating on the West African coast.