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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Prestoninanus, post: 808535, member: 20205&quot;]I don&#039;t know who wrote that George III forbade his likeness from appearing on copper coinage, but they are talking nonsense (apart from anything else, despite popular American perception, George III was a constitutional monarch and wasn&#039;t in a position to stop the Government issuing coinage even if he had wanted to).</p><p>&nbsp;Copper coin production throughout the 18th century stopped and started according to whether there was a perceived need for it. There was a reasonably prolific issue of copper coinage (halfpennies and farthings) between 1770 and 1775, whereupon production stopped again (the RM didn&#039;t produce base metal coins in-house again until 1821). Following this, Britain was almost constantly at war with various people, and the government had other priorities, like trying to subdue the American colonies whilst also fending off the French, Spanish and Dutch. The only coins that were struck on a regular basis at this time were gold ones.</p><p>&nbsp;It also has to be remembered that at this time, the Royal Mint was only allowed to strike coins containing the legally required weight of metal bought at a fixed price, and once the market rose above this, making coin production unprofitable, the RM simply stopped making coins, and waited for a cheap supply of metal to come in (sometimes from bullion captured by privateers) to allow it to resume production. </p><p>&nbsp;For this reason, lower-denomination coin production, especially silver coinage, was often sporadic throughout the 18th century, not just during George III&#039;s reign. But for various reasons, the problem started to come to a head in the late 1780s...</p><p><br /></p><p>Yes, I think perhaps another reason was that because coin production was so sporadic in the 18th century, the Royal Mint&#039;s ability to produce coins degraded through inactivity (loss of skilled workers, use of decrepit machinery etc), and it became more difficult for them to produce adequate quantaties of coins without making a loss. Because of efficiency savings through the use of steam power, Boulton was able to produce those impressive cartwheel issues at a lower cost than the Royal Mint despite the fact that Boulton was striking coins with a copper content very close to their intrinsic worth....[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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