Hello everyone My first post here, so greetings to you all! I have a slightly baffling coin in my possession and I wonder if anyone could cast some light so to speak on it's identity. I apologize for the not so amazing pictures here, but hopefully it's enough for the basic gist of my question. The coin is of George III, which can be made out enough, and measures approx 25mm across, weighs 4.98 grams, and is 1mm high. That makes it a British farthing technically (or thereabouts), but if you see the wording is cropped horribly and the bust appears just too large for the face - and the reverse is missing date, which appears pushed way off the bottom of the coin. So it's more like a G.III penny, on the size of a farthing coin. I'm a little new to numismatics and haven't seen that many error coins, or counterfeits, but I have seen quite a lot of tampered with and clipped. But it seems odd someone wanting to size a penny down to a farthing ... so I'm wondering is it possibly a mis-strike, a counterfeit, or a colonial coin perhaps? The coin is actually quite badly worn, but it does have curious sharp surface detail that I outlined in red, and a more stretched 'X' in REX than I can match against others. Any thoughts would be much appreciated. I hope I've given enough info - and sorry again for the not quite so excellent pictures! I can take more if anyone is interested. Buster
Whats sup Buster. I am sure that someone who collects this era of coinage will come by and Help. Welcome to Ct.
Hi Pickin and a Grinnin - thanks for your welcoming! I was pretty ashamed of those unnecessarily poor pictures, so I spent a few more minutes fighting with my phone and a little Photoshopping for clarity. Voila. The coin actually looks a bit better in this picture than in reality oddly. Hope I've posted in the right place for this sort of question - thanks again for any comments! Busta
The Camera is un -forgiving as some older women used to say when I was young. A good camera will find a lot of defects, that you missed when Purchasing it.
Here's an article that might help. If it doesn't help, at least it's worth knowing. The OP's coin "may" be an evasion token. http://www.thecoppercorner.com/history/evasions_hist.html
Very interesting. Thanks a lot for that link doug - this I'm pretty sure now is most likely the exact case with my "coin" here, and I'm a little surprised at not having been aware of this already! Live and learn eh? I'm going to have to go back thru my old British coppers now. But I wonder - does this make a "coin" more or less valuable or collectable..?
You'd probably have to study auction realizations to know that. My "job" here is to make 64 years of experience available, free, along with a few adamant observations on PMs, and only a few wise cracks thrown in.
Well good job sir - honestly that was very helpful! I'm a keen but very amateur I guess coin collector - a few years experience and a few thousand odd coins from all over. I'm not really a buyer or seller - I'm lucky to have some very dedicated metal detector friends, who often dump handfuls of dirty coins on my desk, which I carefully clean up and research. If I'm lucky I get to keep some - but not if they think the coins are worth "a fortune", or anything over £10! Much to learn. I've sorted thru 20 Roman and about 50 Georgian > modern coins today. Including this one and a rather beautiful 1926 Shilling as the top picks.
Very nice contemporary counterfeit. As is often the case, it's not heavily circulated at all, but designed to look that way in order to be more convincing
The upper crust of British society really could have cared less about "little people" and little money problems. This was a real issue from the mid 17th century on up to the mid 19th century. From the time of the English Civil War of the 1640s the crown more or less ignored small change. When it was issued it was done by "patent" or contract meaning that coin was often minted by private concerns that profited considerably from minting underweight copper and bronze coins. To alleviate the shortages of small change merchants, municipalities etc took on the tasks of creating their own small change in farthings, halfpence and penny coins - until the crown cracked down on such in 1672. Later in the 17th century the Tower mint in London did take on the task of minting farthings and halfpence, but rather sparingly. This was the situation that thence saw the rise of the counterfeits beginning in the 18th century and continuing unabated until the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century. Counterfeits were not created so much to shortchange the crown or fraudulent purposes as they were more to alleviate a serious shortage of small change that the crown seemingly ignored. The problem exasperated into larger denominations, ie threenubs, tanners and bobs and thence the crown took notice during the Napoleonic war era and started cranking out significant bronze starting in 1797 and silver starting in 1817 and the crown cracked down on counterfeits, evasion and privately issued tokens. The issue of money creation was one of the initial driving forces that lit some of the arising conflict betwixt the American colonists and Great Britain when the crown objected to the colonists issuing paper money because of the lack of a suitable coinage.
Thanks Scotti for the excellent potted history and taking the time to write it - this should be the Wiki entry for the subject! And thanks everyone for the comments, and for opening my eyes to a whole new fascinating and hitherto unknown branch of numismatics. I've looked through my collection and am pretty sure now that I have other counterfeits / evasion tokens of the same era, including one that looks like it says "George fart king" - which I has assumed until now was "farthing"! This is my new favorite subject, I'll post some pictures later.
