1 Penny Douglas - Atlas Office

Issued by the Atlas Office — a Douglas-based commercial firm — during a period when official copper coinage for the Isle of Man had effectively dried up, this piece is a trade token rather than a government issue. Britain's chronic small-change shortage in the late 18th and early 19th centuries pushed merchants across the British Isles to commission their own copper tokens, and the Isle of Man was no exception. The practice was eventually suppressed by the Copper Coinage Act of 1821, which made private token issue illegal and rendered pieces like this one obsolete almost immediately upon enforcement.