1 Penny Cape of Good Hope, Copper-Nickel issue

The Cape Colony issued copper-nickel coinage in the 1880s during a period of significant monetary friction — the gold rushes on the Witwatersrand were drawing labor and capital away from the Cape, and small-denomination coinage was chronically short in circulation. The 1889 penny belongs to a modest series struck at the Royal Mint rather than locally, as the Colony had no minting infrastructure of its own.

The X# prefix in the Krause catalog flags this as an unofficial or token issue rather than government-sanctioned legal tender — a distinction that reflects the Colony's complicated monetary authority prior to the formation of the South African Republic's unified currency framework after 1910.