1 Penny - Victoria

Nova Scotia's copper coinage of this period was struck in Birmingham by Boulton & Watt's successors at the Soho Mint, fulfilling a contract arranged through the colonial administration rather than any Royal Mint involvement. The province had been issuing its own copper since 1824, filling a chronic small-change shortage that imperial silver coinage never adequately addressed at the local retail level. Halifax merchants had long tolerated a chaotic mix of counterfeits, tokens, and foreign coppers in daily commerce, and these provincially sanctioned pieces were a deliberate effort to impose some order on that circulation.

The Breton 873 attribution places this squarely within the documented Nova Scotia series, though die marriages within the 1840–1843 run reward closer examination.