Zoo / Menagerie Tokens
mnemtsas2
Posts: 745 ✭✭✭
A couple of newps. These are listed as Conder's in the D&H catalogue but they have no denomination.
The first is a Middlesex D&H 25, T.HALL menagerie token. This is the half penny. These had the very first numismatic representation of the kangaroos in the world, just 7 years after the the animal was sited by the British in 1788,
The second is a farthing from Pidcock's Menagerie. Catalogued Middlesex D&H 456.
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Comments
Cool tokens. I've never seen either of those.
DPOTD-3
'Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery'
CU #3245 B.N.A. #428
Don
These had the very first numismatic representation of the kangaroos in the world, just 7 years after the the animal was sited by the British in 1788,
Actually the British first sighted them in 1770; Captain Cook's party shot one and brought its skin back for stuffing. The taxidermists in London, never having seen the live animal, made their best guesses from Sir Joseph Banks' descriptions as to the animal's proportions and attitude. Which explains partway why many of these early depictions of "kanguroos" look rather unlike the real things. The 1795 token is almost certainly relying on the stuffed Banks specimen.
Before Cook, kangaroos were sighted (but never captured) by explorers and wayward traders sailing off the West Coast. But reports that came back to Europe of a strange animal in New Holland that had the face of a deer, stood upright like a man and hopped about like a frog, were widely dismissed as fanciful traveller's tales.
Back on topic: those are cool tokens.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD.
I love these early tokens depicting animals for some reason. Those are very nice ones too!
I am suddenly reminded of Storks post about another diversion and a hole in the head.
Totally Cool
Steve
Thanks SAP, that's some good information. There's a Numismatic Association of Australia paper about these sorts of tokens which I've found, it makes for interesting reading: numismatics.org.au/pdfjournal/Vol12/Vol%2012%20Article%201.pdf