1 Penny - Lipman Levy Wellington

Lipman Levy was a Wellington merchant who issued this token during the acute small-change shortage that plagued New Zealand's colonial economy in the 1850s, well before the colonial government moved to establish a reliable domestic coinage supply. Private tradesmen tokens of this period circulated as functional currency by necessity, not novelty. Levy's issue is among the better-documented Wellington merchant pieces, catalogued across Andrews, Renniks, and Gray — cross-referencing that survives because the type was actively traded by early antipodean collectors.