1749 British Halfpenny PCGS MS64 RB

Boosibri

$2500

1749 - An Important Year in Colonial Numismatics

During the first decades of the English colonization of North America the settlers needed to obtain their own small change. The only small change coins to gain general acceptance throughout the colonies were British coppers. Although British silver and gold coins were not allowed to be exported to the colonies, there was no restriction on the export of coppers.

The largest shipment of British coppers to be sent to the colonies arrived in Boston on the ship The Mermaid. The British parliament sent Massachusetts Bay almost twenty-one long tons of Spanish silver coins (653,000 troy ounces in 217 chests) as well as ten long tons of English coppers (in one hundred casks), in order to reimburse the Colony for the assistance it provided to the Lewisburg expedition on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, during the French and Indian War. According to the Massachusetts Currency Reform Act of January 26, 1749 the total reimbursement was equivalent to £183,649 2s7 and 1/2d in British sterling. The coppers included over 800,000 halfpence and more than 420,000 farthings all dated 1749; approximately thirty percent of the entire mintage for the year.

lava

Very nice.

Boosibri

ttt