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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Jimski, post: 2886268, member: 77373&quot;]1997 Great Britain penny and 2 pence (Cartwheel coinage), Soho Mint. </p><p>[ATTACH=full]692865[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>penny</p><p>[ATTACH=full]692861[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]692862[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>2 pence</p><p>[ATTACH=full]692863[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]692864[/ATTACH] </p><p>Some early history of the Soho mint. {My comments are in italics}</p><p><br /></p><p>From: <a href="http://sohomint.info/earlyyears.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://sohomint.info/earlyyears.html" rel="nofollow">http://sohomint.info/earlyyears.html</a></p><p><i>There</i> {at Soho}, <i>Boulton established a traditional hand-operated mint, paid for by the East India Company, and which produced eighteen tons of coins between August 1786 and the middle of May 1787. The East India Company <i>awarded Boulton a second order for thirty tons in May 1787. ...</i></i></p><p><i><i><br /></i></i></p><p><i><i><i>Boulton calculated the costs of his production, noted the price paid by the East India Company, and concluded that minting could be profitable, but not the way he was doing it at that moment. Concentrating all the production at one site, and using steam power – that was the way forward. ...</i></i></i></p><p><i><i><i><br /></i></i></i></p><p><i><i><i>From: <a href="http://sohomint.info/industrial.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://sohomint.info/industrial.html" rel="nofollow"><i>http://sohomint.info/industrial.html</i></a></i></i></i></p><p><i><i><i><i>Boulton had his </i>{steam powered} <i>mint up and running by the late summer of 1789, only to find that his </i>{prime} <i>customer, the British Government, had other things on its mind, had in fact left the shop when its proprietor wasn’t looking. Soho would eventually get a contract to coin regal copper </i>{the cartwheel coppers of 1997 were the first}<i>, and then another </i>{the 1799 coppers},<i> and another still </i>{the 1806 coppers}<i>. But in the meantime, its master must coin as he could. So he did: Boulton joined others in producing copper penny and halfpenny tokens (his products are almost always distinguished by their artistry and full copper content), coinage for India, Bermuda </i>{the 1793 penny}<i>, the Gold Coast, and Sierra Leone </i>{the 1791 Sierra Leon Company coinage}<i> – anything to keep the mint busy, ... He finally got his big break in 1797, but by then, he was thinking beyond coinage, mulling over the idea of a logical extension to his labors. He’d struck coins and tokens of a new type, and he’d sent them across the world. Why not create and ship entire mints, so that the world could make his new coinage for itself?</i></i></i></i></p><p><i><i><i><br /></i></i></i></p><p><i><i><i><i>It was done. Boulton was treating with the Russian government just as his first British coining contract was being signed. When all was said and done, he, his son and their Soho enterprise would have provided mints and the engines to power them to Russia, Denmark, India, Portugal, Brasil, Mexico, and, most satisfying of all, to Tower Hill </i>{Boulton died in 1809, the year prior to the opening to the London Tower Hill Mint in 1810, which was outfitted with Boulton’s steam presses}. </i></i></i></p><p><i><i></i></i>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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