Hey guys! So I just created a post on the ancients forum asking the same thing (just with the 4 ancients I couldnt identify myself). Again, Ive come close to identifying all of the coin purchases from ANA Worlds Fair of Money 2017, finally, and have 6 remainding pieces. 2 of these are world coins so I asking here seeing whether or not you guys could put some input on these. Coin #1- I, like most foreign coins unfortunately, have no idea anything about Hops Tokens. However this coins description says "c. 18th cen.[tury] England. Hops Token. 1/272. Lead." Now I assume that 1/272 is a denomination? Here is all the lettering I can make out, * in place of letters or series of letters I can't decipher. Obverse: E 272 Reverse: * (maybe E P?) SW Coin #2- This coin's description is "Spain counterstrike 4/8 marvedis ~1600's." I believe that the counterstrike noted is the 8 on the obverse, but once again, this is the first time I've even heard of the denomination maravedis. Any help or input is greatly appreciated, thanks. -SC
Can’t help with the hops token but the 8 maravedis cob was a Spanish copper coin that started out as a 4 maravedis and then counterstamped with an 8 to change the value. Google 8 maravedis cob and you’ll get more info than you need.
@H8_modern beat me to it on the Spanish piece. As to the hops token, I hadn't heard of them, though there were quite a few lead tokens made in England from late medieval times onward. This is a bit later than the lead tokens I've seen. (I even dug one while detecting over there). I did find a PDF of a 1953 article about these. This is speculation, since I did not read the full article I just linked, but I would imagine the numbers on your token there had something to do with an individual worker's ID number (say "Worker #272", perhaps). This thing probably would have been given to the worker for a particular quantity of hops harvested, and would've had something to do with how they got paid later. They probably turned in these lead checks (tokens) after a certain period and exchanged them for actual silver money. The letters might have identified the farm or a company. Edit- aha. I just went back to read. To quote directly from the article:
Thanks so much guys! The reason these two were last to identify is because they are really comolicated, I appreciate the input! @lordmarcovan very interesting find! I wish I could be that lucky . @H8_modern I never knew that they counterstamped things to change value! Would this be act of government or civillians? Thanks much.
