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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;afantiques, post: 2171617, member: 71234&quot;]The origin was a period of forty years on and off of a chronic shortage of small change. The half threepence was a logical step down from the sixpence, half a shilling. Of course, the fact that it was silver meant the size was miniscule and it was no real answer to the coinage problem. </p><p><br /></p><p>The 20 years from about 1790 to 1810 were a period when there was virtually no state coinage of farthings to pennies worth mentioning, hence the vast range of token coinage. Many efforts were made to establish a new coinage because a copper coin worth a penny in copper was very large and heavy and the famous cartwheel twopence was absurd.&nbsp; The idea of making a copper penny worth a penny in metal was slowly abandoned, but the idea that the currency should be worth money in itself hung on in some quarters leading to a silver coin that was worth its weight in silver. As is usual with government projects this arrived 15 or 20 years after it would have done any good. Many of the coins were packed off to the colonies where tiny amounts of money were involved in deals, to join the fractional farthings in obscurity.</p><p><br /></p><p>This was also&nbsp; the&nbsp; period of the silver groat or 4 pence, a coin so easily confused with the silver threepence that any random assortment of silver threepences today is likely to contain the odd groat that has slipped in unnoticed.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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