1 Penny - Grattan, R. (Auckland)

R. Grattan operated a grocery and provision business in Auckland during the early 1870s, issuing this token at a moment when colonial New Zealand suffered a persistent shortage of official small change. The Auckland Provincial Government had no authority to mint coin, and the imperial supply from Britain was chronically inadequate for retail trade — a gap that dozens of local merchants filled with their own copper issues. Grattan's token circulates among a well-documented cluster of Auckland tradesmen's pieces from the same period, most struck in Birmingham by firms supplying the antipodean colonial market.