Martin & Sach operated as ironmongers on Rundle Street, Adelaide, and issued this token during a period when the colonial government's chronic shortage of small change left South Australian merchants effectively forced to mint their own. The token trade tokens of this period circulated by mutual consent rather than legal sanction — tolerated rather than endorsed.
Andrews #351 places this among the documented Adelaide merchant issues struck in Birmingham, almost certainly by the Heaton Mint, which supplied the overwhelming majority of Australian tradesmen's tokens throughout the 1850s and 1860s.
Martin & Sach operated as ironmongers on Rundle Street, Adelaide, and issued this token during a period when the colonial government's chronic shortage of small change left South Australian merchants effectively forced to mint their own. The token trade tokens of this period circulated by mutual consent rather than legal sanction — tolerated rather than endorsed.
Andrews #351 places this among the documented Adelaide merchant issues struck in Birmingham, almost certainly by the Heaton Mint, which supplied the overwhelming majority of Australian tradesmen's tokens throughout the 1850s and 1860s.