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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Jimski, post: 2878119, member: 77373&quot;]Bahamas Penny, Soho Mint</p><p>[ATTACH=full]689120[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]689121[/ATTACH]</p><p>From the Department of Special Collections, University of Notre Dame: <a href="https://coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/Bahamas.intro.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/Bahamas.intro.html" rel="nofollow">https://coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/Bahamas.intro.html</a></p><p><br /></p><p><i>In 1656, Bermudan colonists arrived in the Bahamas founding the first English settlement at New Providence. The colony prospered, but the proximity of the islands to the Spanish trade routes also made the area headquarters for several pirate bands. Since local authorities could not control these renegades the local commerce suffered. The situation became so desperate that in 1717 the Lord Proprietors of the islands surrendered control of the government to George I, who commissioned Captain Woodes Rogers </i>{who was a privateer himself, Jimski} <i>as royal governor. Woodes arrived in the Bahamas in 1718 with heavily armed troops and soon subdued the pirate bands.&nbsp; Some one thousand pirates surrendered and were pardoned … In 1728 this event was commemorated in the selection of the national motto, &quot;Explusis piratis restituta commercia,&quot; (With the expulsion of the pirates commerce has been restored).</i></p><p><br /></p><p><i>The economy of the Bahama Islands made extensive use of barter and relied on Spanish gold and silver coins for currency. Around the same time that some of the newly formed American states were coining coppers, the Bahamas legislature in 1789 passed an act regulating copper currency (Act 29 Geo. III. cap. 2). A proposal for copper tokens was put forward in 1802 but apparently no action was taken. On June 30, 1806 the Bahamas Assembly ordered £500 in copper pennies from Boulton&#039;s Soho Mint in Birmingham. The dies were cut by Conrad Heinrich Kuechler, modeling the obverse on the 1806 English halfpenny.&nbsp; </i>{The reverse image is that of the seal of the colony.&nbsp; The Bahamas penny is the same weight as the British halfpenny at the time. Jimski}</p><p><br /></p><p><i>… The local population in the Bahamas preferred cut silver to copper tokens and so these coins were refused by the local population, thus the project to mint coppers was abandoned. Interestingly later in 1825 when British silver and copper coins were introduced in Jamaica, the Bahamas and related colonies only the silver was accepted while the coppers were sent back to Britain (see Pridmore , p. 93).</i></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Well the preceding paragraph explains why there is only a single Bahamas coin entered in Krause World Coins for the 19th century.&nbsp; Hmm.&nbsp; Makes me wonder how/where the posted coin was so worn down.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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