1 Penny - Brown and Duthie Taranaki, New Plymouth

Brown and Duthie operated as general merchants in New Plymouth during the 1860s, a period when the Taranaki land wars had severely disrupted trade and formal currency was chronically scarce in the settlement. Private token issues filled the gap that the colonial banking system couldn't. The Andrews, Renniks, and Gray catalog references all point to a well-documented but genuinely uncommon piece — New Plymouth tokens as a class survive in far smaller numbers than their Auckland or Dunedin counterparts, reflecting both the town's smaller population and the violence that interrupted normal commerce.