Is there a database of English merchant countermarks from the early 19th century? I recently picked up this rough example with a beautifully clear countermark among a large group of cents and half cents from that era (most were 1806 or 1807 half cents, along with one *very worn* 1823 Irish half cent). Both sides are punched. Could be "IP" but there seems to be a faint bar & crossbar for "FP". There's also a strange pattern surrounding the letters, presumably the shape of the end of the punch. Not a sunburst, but something like a beehive?
2 other coins in the group were also countermarked; possibly from the same merchant. "E . Hind" & "EH".
No guarantee that they were sold from anywhere near their 19th century use, but they shipped from a Wakefield postal code in the UK. Seller had "found them amongst her grandfather's things in the shed".
By the way, if these are British, the are not one cent and half cent: They are one penny and half penny. The the British system was not decimal, but 12 pennies to the shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound. The convention to call a one cent coin a penny is American, was more a habit, a remnant from after the War of Independence, after which the USA adopted the decimal system of dollars and cents, 100 cents to the dollar (cent =100) in 1887, but people continued to call them pennies.
