Great Britain 17th Century HIS HALF PENNY Tradesman Tokens 1640 to 1680

Thanks, Courtz, for your inquiry. You have an example of and old tradesman token from Great Britain, presumably from a merchant named Johnathan Hill in Sarvm (Salisbury) in south-central England.

In his book Coins, Tokens and Medals of the East Riding of Yorkshire, author Philip Whitting draws a distinction between the official (regal) coinage of Great Britain and the lowly farthings and half pennies issued by tradesmen.

As against the regal coinage of the kingdom issued by command and through the agencies of the king and his ministers, token coinage is unofficial, local and generally personal. The pieces were small and made of copper, bronze or billon. In the 17th century there was an orgy of token issuing and over 12,500 in the British Isles which have been listed by Williamson, of which 4,350-odd come from London and Southwark. Kent issued more than any other county (595), and Yorkshire comes next with 445, of which 78 can be attributed to the East Riding.

These tokens are not easy to find today, especially tokens in good condition. Farthings (one-quarter of a penny) do not carry the denomination explicitly (see our secondary image, which is an old farthing token), but most half pennies use variations of HIS HALF PENNY encircled at the center. Sometimes HALF is spelled HALFE and sometimes PENNY is spelled PENY.

The actual date, merchant, and location on the coin do not affect value as much as its overall condition and eye appeal. Assuming a token does not have strong problems with scratches, stains, spots, cleanings, nicks, gouges, mutilation and the like, and assuming a token has decent eye appeal, the catalog values run like this:

worn: $50 US dollars approximate catalog value
average circulated: $150
well preserved: $400

The images on this page come from ABC Coins and Tokens in Alnwick, UK. You may want to contact ABC to get more information. For in-depth research, in-depth tools are required. CoinQuest recommends Trade tokens issued in the seventeenth century in England, Wales, and Ireland, by corporations, merchants, tradesmen, etc, Volume 2 by William Boyne and George Charles Williamson,
cqLastNotify