This coin was a gift given to me many years ago and has been somewhat of a unique piece in my collection. As far as I know, its a 1769 Irish Half Penny. Does anyone know anything about these coins. What I would be interested in knowing is the standard info: grade, mintage, varieties of 1769 that this coin may or may not have, and finally an approximate value. This is my oldest non-ancient coin and I really like it so any info would be helpful. Thanks!!!
There are three types, one with a different sized head, one with longer hair, and yours, which is Type B, Spink 582 in my book. Struck at the Soho mint, Birmingham. I would call this one about Fine. To give an idea of how out of date my book is, it values this piece in VF at 50 shillings.
Is there any estimates on how many of these were minted? I'm not sure if precise records were kept at that time...although there are records of us coins from the late 1790s so maybe there is. Anyone know?
Usually back then when they were minted they were accounted for more by their weight and when and how many tonnes of copper-bronze etc. were purchased for the coinage. The records for the coinage by weight often stretched the purchase over several years, and unbelievably to our modern senses, no real accounting for the coins by date were kept. It was a very similar pattern for Scottish coinage in the 17th century, Irish contract coinage by William Wood in the 1720's and even the Rosa Americana coins for North America that were minted by William Wood. Curiously, but not incredibly, inaccuracies did result when audits came. The Scottish mint was shuttered in 1682 after differences were noted betwixt the amount of bronze purchased from Sweden and that which was actually stamped into bawbees and bodles. Irish coinage was very intermittent, and often underweight. Needless to say, Ireland was a place where someone could devalue the coinage a bit and get away with it, whereas in England such was not possible. For this reason the Irish and Rosa Americana pieces were either banned outright as in Massachusetts Bay, or frowned upon in other Colonial American areas because of the lower metal vs. value of the coin ratios.
OK, so then there is really no way of knowing how many were made. Here's a better question then I suppose. Is there any way of knowing how many coins of a various type from this period are thought to exist? I guess I'm wondering if this coin was produced in the 100,000 numbers or the 1,000,000...or a whole lot more. I would imagine that coins from that era were produced in smaller numbers just because of the population sizes back then...but then again, I really have no idea.
As a general rule coins, even back then, were produced in the millions. But they often had a lot more mints than we have today. This was due partially to the problem with transportation of coins around the realm. More mints in more locations solved that. And depending on the country, it was also a right of the nobility granted them by the crown to operate a mint, thus allowing them to make money. And I don't mean the minting of money, I mean to make a profit from the minting of coins. This was one of th ebest sources of income that the nobility had. Also, with many countries it is possible to find accurate mintage numbers back to the 13th century and even before. But with others it is not, it just depends on the country.
But in the 17-18th centuries mints in Britain were few for the bronze pieces, usually London, but also Soho for the Matthew Boulton pieces. The last of the Regal mints were in the 1690's re-coinage of the older hammered coins, ie Exeter etc. had branch mints. The last Regal mint aside from London was Edinburgh, and it stopped minting coinage in 1709, though it remained on the books as a mint until 1816. It would be a serious stretch to suggest that Irish 1/2d's were stamped out in the millions for any given date. But hundreds of thousands would not be out of line. They were the mainstay coin of the realm in Ireland for most people, larger denominations would have been the realm of merchants and the landed class. I have a reasonable collection of Irish 1/2's from Charles II on up through George IV, I should image them sometime. Right now I am pondering purchasing one of the 1691 Limerick halfpennies issued by James II in exile.
I do not disagree, which is why the first words in my posts were - as a genral rule. That was so folks would understand that I was not talking about this particular coin.
