1 Penny - Geo. Petty Melbourne, Victoria

George Petty operated an ironmongery business on Bourke Street, Melbourne, and like dozens of Victorian merchants in the late 1850s, turned to token coinage after the colonial copper currency situation became genuinely unworkable — shortages of official British bronze had left small-change transactions dependent on whatever private issuers could get struck, predominantly in Birmingham. The Andrews and Renniks references capture two die varieties for this issue, a reminder that these tokens were ordered in batches and matched with whatever dies the engraver had available or modified between runs.