I love this particular Conder token type (D&H 15 Sussex Chichester). The obverse features "Good Queen Bess" (Elizabeth I), while the reverse shows Chichester cathedral. Guess the grade if you feel like it. Don't worry, it's an open-book test. The answer is here. I once had a ... umm... wearable example, back in my old "Holey Coin Vest" days.
The token above is from 1794, so a few centuries removed from the Elizabethan era. Here's a sixpence from her time, though. Great Britain (England): silver sixpence of Elizabeth I, 1575, Tower mint, eglantine mintmark
Was this part of a series of tokens? Seems weird to make an QE1 token a couple hundred years after she died. And also, that collar. We have to talk about that collar. Looks a bit like a certain dinosaur!
There were hundreds if not thousands of varieties of provincial copper tokens in Britain in the late 1700s and early 1800s, with a truly mind-boggling array of themes. Some were political, whimsical, or even scandalous. Many- indeed, most- were advertisements. There were buildings, birds, animals, ships, people, shoes, and almost everything imaginable in their world shown on them. They were quite popular with upper-class collectors in their own time, which is why so many beautifully preserved examples survive for us now, over two centuries later. Many have surviving mint red and prooflike surfaces. Many more circulated and lived a hard life in commerce. And of course they still have a big following among collectors today. The "gallows" types are especially popular. Dalton & Hamer is the standard reference for these so-called "Conder tokens". It is a reference that is so old that it's out of copyright now, and as such, is available for free online. Yes, Queen Elizabeth sure knew how to rock a high lace collar, didn't she? Even dudes were wearing huge, ruffled, lacy collars at the time, so the Queen's had to be the biggest in the room, now, didn't it? Of course it did. As to a cage match pitting ol' Lizzie versus that frilled dinosaur from Jurassic Park, I'm not sure who I'd bet on. It would be a pretty tough contest. Lizzie versus Lizard? Don't count Her Majesty out! (Just ask those Spanish Armada blokes how they fared against her.)
