Private token coinage issued by Scottish and Irish estates in the early nineteenth century was rarely a matter of convenience — it was usually a symptom of acute small-change scarcity that plagued Britain throughout the Napoleonic Wars period, when silver was hoarded and the Royal Mint struggled to meet demand. Dalzell Farm tokens occupy an obscure corner of that emergency issue tradition, produced to facilitate wage payments and estate transactions when official coinage simply wasn't circulating.
The KM#CC22 designation places this firmly in the counterstamped or countermarked category — details that catalog entries alone won't fully resolve without cross-referencing Dalton & Hamer.
Private token coinage issued by Scottish and Irish estates in the early nineteenth century was rarely a matter of convenience — it was usually a symptom of acute small-change scarcity that plagued Britain throughout the Napoleonic Wars period, when silver was hoarded and the Royal Mint struggled to meet demand. Dalzell Farm tokens occupy an obscure corner of that emergency issue tradition, produced to facilitate wage payments and estate transactions when official coinage simply wasn't circulating.
The KM#CC22 designation places this firmly in the counterstamped or countermarked category — details that catalog entries alone won't fully resolve without cross-referencing Dalton & Hamer.