I had been looking for one these pieces for a while as part of my "George III crisis coinage collection." The Tower of London Mint made half pennies from 1770 to 1775. People needed these coins for their everyday lives. Since the real thing was becoming scarcer and scarcer, counterfeiters jumped in and made substitutes to fill the void. Here is a genuine British Half Penny from the period. And here is my recent purchase, and very well preserved counterfeit. This counterfeit is quite well made, but if you compare the thickness between the two pieces, the counterfeit is about half as thick. Here is an error counterfeit half penny. I have never owned a brockage in all my many years as a collector. Assuming that the obverse is the anvil, bottom, die, this piece was made when a previous coin stuck to the reverse die, which was the hammer, upper, die. A planchet was placed in the press and the coin was struck. The obverse is normal, but the reverse was struck with the coin that was stuck to the hammer die. That results in a mirror image of the design. When I lived in New Jersey in the 1970s, a club member had a brockage of a U.S. large cent circa 1816 to the mid 1820s. He was not about so sell it, so I never asked. I was also, and never have been a big error coin collector.
