As the previous coin I just posted I also got this at ANA Worlds Fair of Money from a junk bin. I identified it as 1766 Ireland George III Half Penny. Numista Listing: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces21907.html I now found out that during the time people would take these and make evasion tokens and use them as contemporary counterfeits. Is this the case? I mean, to me the die does look poorly engraved (focus on leave detail above head as well as letters). I have it listed in my personal reviewings as ANA-IE01. Normal weight is 7.4g (should be a bit less due to wear). This coin weighs 7.8g. I will have closer images of the details in just a minute.
I cannot claim to be a specialist on the Irish coins, but I do have a good Coincraft book on the topic. Firstly to say that being an Evasion would probably increase it's value as these are widely collected, particularly in the US. Having said that it could be genuine. My book gives a weight range of 8.1 to 9.0g, which with the wear showing is probably still in range. Evasions tended to be lighter to save on copper. The die faults do not look too drastic - many of the Evasions were much more obvious, sometimes even varying fundamentally from the design. The Regal issue was done under contract - so presumably not at the Royal Mint, and so prone to more faults than usual? Let's see what anyone else has to say.
There is a yahoo chat group on contemporary counterfeits that still seems to be somewhat active. I had an interest in this topic, but don't collect per se, so I used to follow it hoping to learn something. These guys were big into classifying and studying this stuff. Like @PaddyB said, evasions are worth more than low grade regal issues IMO, I think the portrait looks a little dodgy, but the letter punches don't look bad. But it's just a guess. I'm following this thread in hopes of learning something myself. If no expert chimes in here, you may want to look up that group.
I will check out that group if nobody else chimes in. Interesting info guys. So you're learning towards not counterfeit? I find it funny for a counterfeit to be more valuable new area of numismatics for me that's for sure.
Evasions are not the same as counterfeits. An evasion has clearly different design elements from originals and are called such because the maker is "evading" the death penalty as opposed to outright counterfeiters. It looks to me like a genuine coin that just spent a lot of time in the ground.
I was just going to put in a similar amendment! I have been corrected in another thread to the effect that "Evasions" have a noticeably different design to the original whereas Counterfeits are as close as the maker could afford to the original -usually lighter in weight to save copper. Evasions are heavily collected, counterfeits less so. I still believe the OP coin is a genuine Regal issue, just well used.
Thanks everybody! I am not great with this stuff but I am getting better! I saw an image of another one that said GEORGIVS III but had a George II bust! Hard stuff to identify. Thanks for helping me learn. -SC
Yes, the evasion pieces almost look like gibberish with the mottoes and names. The majority of people were illiterate and couldn't read to tell if it was phony. This way they evaded ant-counterfeiting laws.
Some of the Canadian pieces are known as Blacksmith Tokens. They were made to look like they were heavily circulated so that they didn't stand out. Usually all you see is an image of Britannia or Hibernia/Harp.
