2 Quartos Robert Keeling

Robert Keeling was a Gibraltar merchant who issued these copper tokens privately in 1802 to alleviate a chronic shortage of small change on the Rock — a problem that plagued the garrison town throughout the Napoleonic period, when official coinage from both Britain and Spain circulated erratically and in insufficient quantities. Keeling's tokens filled a practical gap, and several Gibraltar merchants did the same during this era of acute fractional coin scarcity.

The Pridmore reference (Pr#17) places this squarely within the documented series of British colonial and garrison token issues catalogued by Major Fred Pridmore.