Middlesex 1795 half penny token D&H-851
This specimen was lot 32502 in Stack's Bowers Collector's Choice sale (Costa Mesa, CA, May 2024), where it sold for $720. The catalog description[1] noted, "GREAT BRITAIN. Trade Tokens. Middlesex. Spence's Copper 1/2 Penny Token, 1795. PCGS MS-66 Red Brown. Obverse: Man sitting in a prison cell, gnawing on a bone; Reverse: Three armed citizens (or soldiers). The finer of just two seen in the PCGS census, this Superb Gem presents intense brilliance and color, as well as very striking imagery." 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-851.
- 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, May 2024 World Collectors Choice Online Auction, Costa Mesa, CA: Stack's Bowers Galleries, Inc., 2024.
Link to:
- Middlesex (1790-94) half penny token D&H-717, "Rouse Britannia!"
- Middlesex (1794) half penny token D&H-719, Spence's
- Middlesex (1795) half penny token D&H-716, Spence's
- Middlesex 1795 half penny token D&H-720, Spence's
- Middlesex 1795 half penny token D&H-726, Spence's, BRITISH LIBERTY DISPLAYED
- Middlesex 1795 half penny token D&H-729b, Spence's
- Middlesex 1795 half penny token D&H-748, Spence's
- Coins and currency dated 1795