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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;John Conduitt, post: 7689391, member: 109923&quot;]I don&#039;t know of a single reference but there&#039;s quite a lot online about the English equivalents. I&#039;m less familiar with the Irish issues, but this was the time when the Bank of England was attempting to resolve the coinage crisis that came to a head in the 1790s, in lieu of any action from the Royal Mint. I think the Bank of Ireland followed suit.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Bank of England had a stockpile of Spanish silver coins and, given the general shortage of silver, decided to get them into circulation by countermarking them.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>George III Half Dollar, 1797</b></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1320300[/ATTACH]</p><p><b>Madrid. Silver, 32mm, 13.0g (S 3767). </b>The oval countermark of George III was stamped in 1797 in London on a Spanish Charles IIII four reales, 1791 MF.</p><p><br /></p><p>Matthew Boulton of the Soho Mint, Birmingham (very much the saviour of the coinage at the time) convinced the Bank of England that their countermarks were easy to counterfeit. So he produced dollars from the Spanish silver.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>George III Dollar, 1804</b></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1320294[/ATTACH]</p><p><b>Soho Mint, Birmingham. Silver from a flattened Spanish 8 reales. 41mm, 27g with test cut. (S 3768).</b></p><p><br /></p><p>The Bank of England then issued these &#039;tokens&#039;, so called because legally only the Royal Mint was meant to issue &#039;coins&#039;, but wasn&#039;t issuing much of anything. The Bank of Ireland did the same (using very similar designs).</p><p><br /></p><p><b>George III Eighteenpence Bank Token, 1815</b></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1320293[/ATTACH]</p><p><b>London. Silver, 26mm, 7.3g (S 3772).</b></p><p><br /></p><p><b>George III 3 Shilling Bank Token, 1813</b></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1320292[/ATTACH]</p><p><b>London. Silver, 34mm, 14.8g (S 3770).</b></p><p><br /></p><p>The crisis was eventually addressed by the Great Recoinage of 1816.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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