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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 160926, member: 66&quot;]Very nice token, and an EXCELLENT write up.</p><p><br /></p><p>I can only add a little about the coin itself.&nbsp; There are only three tokens credited to Hickman, D&amp;H 144, 145, and 146.&nbsp; But 146 was actually a mule of the Hickman reverse die with another die used for an anonymous issue in Middlesex, with an edge inscription used by a differnt merchant.&nbsp; It was most likely made simply as a piece to sell into the token collecting fad of the time.&nbsp; The fact that it is a very rare token would seem to confirm that.</p><p><br /></p><p>D &amp; H 144 and 145 were actually both struck from the same set of dies.&nbsp; Dalton and Hamer say that 145 was struck first from and unfinished die before the second button hole in his coat was added.&nbsp; But the button hole is incuse on the coin so there is no way it could have been added later.&nbsp; #144 with both button holes was the first one struck and the raised feature in the die that formed the lower button hole was later removed from the die, possibly by die polishing (the lower button hole is very shallow) or maybe the raised feature in the die that created it chipped off.</p><p><br /></p><p>The dies were engraved by William Mainwaring of Birmingham in Warwickshire.&nbsp; Mainwaring also handled the manufacturing of the tokens striking five hundredweights of copper for Hickman.&nbsp; This amounted to a total mintage for the two pieces combined of 25,750 coins.&nbsp; Both D&amp;H and Waters claim that the 145 is extremely rare and that only a small portion of the mintage were 145&#039;s.&nbsp; This is incorrect.&nbsp; D&amp;H gives it a rarity of RRR which would mean around 7 o 12 pieces known.&nbsp; I own 4 of them and I have seen several others as well.&nbsp; In fact I find they tend to show up in unattibuted groups of tokens wth greater frequency than 144 does (of which I only own two.).&nbsp; I&#039;ve only bought one of my 145&#039;s attributed.&nbsp; In a recent auction, where it was with two or three other pieces I needed.&nbsp; In the auction they specifically mentioned its rarity.&nbsp; In the same sale I picked up a second piece unattributed in a bulk lot.&nbsp; .&nbsp; I tend to find them with about equal frequency, another researcher who has been tracking appearances for much longer than I have reports that he has seen them on about a 3 to 1 ratio,&nbsp; I would say then that the 145 had a mintage of between 7 and 12 thousand pieces.&nbsp; It doesn&#039;t sound like much, but in Conder tokens that can still be considered to be a common to slightly scarce mintage.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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