Middlesex 1795 farthing token D&H-1117

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Stack's Bowers February 2024 Collector's Choice sale, lot 74851
SB224-74851r.jpg

This specimen was lot 74851 in Stack's Bowers Collector's Choice sale (Costa Mesa, CA, February 2024), where it sold for $168. The catalog description[1] noted, "GREAT BRITAIN. Trade Tokens. Middlesex. Spence's. Copper Farthing Token, 1795. PCGS MS-63 Brown. Obverse: Pig trampling on crown and scepter; Reverse: Inscription in 3 lines. This beautiful and appealing Farthing token delivers a sharp strike, with soft chocolate brown throughout." Farthing tokens were much less popular than the halfpenny tokens yet hundreds of varieties exist. Wikipedia comments, "Thomas Spence (2 July [O.S. 21 June] 1750 – 8 September 1814) was an English Radical and advocate of the common ownership of land and a democratic equality of the sexes. Spence was one of the leading revolutionaries of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was born in poverty and died the same way, after long periods of imprisonment, in 1814." He is responsible for the issue of many of the tokens in Conder's book.

Recorded mintage: unknown.

Specification: copper.

Catalog reference: D&H-1117.

Source:

  • Conder, James. An arrangement of Provincial Coins, tokens, and medalets issued in Great Britain, Ireland, and the colonies, within the last twenty years, from the farthing to the penny size. Ipswich: G. Jermyn, 1798.
  • Dalton, Richard, and Samuel H. Hamer. The Provincial Token Coinage of the 18th Century. 1910-1917. reprinted 2015 by Thomas Publications, Gettysburg, PA.
  • [1]Orsini, Matt, Kyle Ponterio and Jeremy Bostwick, February 2024 World Collectors Choice Online Auction, Costa Mesa, CA: Stack's Bowers Galleries, Inc., 2024.

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