An English made counterfeit half penny

BillJones

I had been looking for one these pieces for a while as part of my "George III crisis coinage collection."

The Tower of London Mint made half pennies from 1770 to 1775. People needed these coins for their everyday lives. Since the real thing was becoming scarcer and scarcer, counterfeiters jumped in and made substitutes to fill the void.

Here is a genuine British Half Penny from the period.

And here is my recent purchase, and very well preserved contemporary counterfeit.

This counterfeit is quite well made, but if you compare the thickness between the two pieces, the counterfeit is about half as thick. I can't weigh the genuine piece because it is certified.

Here is an error counterfeit half penny. I have never owned a brockage in all my many years as a collector. This piece is much lighter than the previous counterfeit that I posted.

Assuming that the obverse is the anvil, bottom, die, this piece was made when a previous coin stuck to the reverse die, which was the hammer, upper, die. A planchet was placed in the press and the coin was struck. The obverse is normal, but the reverse was struck with the coin that was stuck to the hammer die. That results in a mirror image of the design.

When I lived in New Jersey in the 1970s, a club member had a brockage of a U.S. large cent circa 1816 to the mid 1820s. He was not about so sell it, so I never asked. I was also, and never have been a big error coin collector.

jgenn

It certainly seems logical that it was an English made counterfeit but is there any way to trace it to a known group of counterfeiters in England? I understand counterfeiting was a tactic used by foreign adversaries at that time to attempt to undermine economies (mostly by English counterfeiters against the Spanish, I believe).

BillJones

@jgenn said:
It certainly seems logical that it was an English made counterfeit but is there any way to trace it to a known group of counterfeiters in England? I understand counterfeiting was a tactic used by foreign adversaries at that time to attempt to undermine economies (mostly by English counterfeiters against the Spanish, I believe).

Would it have been worth a foreign advocacy’s while to counterfeit half pennies? I have heard of gold, silver and paper money, but it would take a lot of pennies to undermine the economy.

1960NYGiants

Nice examples @BillJones

Similar to the counterfeit 1832 Nova Scotia halfpennies and other Canadian tokens. Some of the counterfeits were imported from England, most were made in upstate NY and New England. A festinating series to study / collect.

jgenn

@BillJones said:

@jgenn said:
It certainly seems logical that it was an English made counterfeit but is there any way to trace it to a known group of counterfeiters in England? I understand counterfeiting was a tactic used by foreign adversaries at that time to attempt to undermine economies (mostly by English counterfeiters against the Spanish, I believe).

Would it have been worth a foreign advocacy’s while to counterfeit half pennies? I have heard of gold, silver and paper money, but it would take a lot of pennies to undermine the economy.

in terms of half pennies, it could serve to undermine the peoples' trust in the government, which might be an advantage to a foreign adversary.