18th Century British Trade Tokens

Nottinghamshire, Nottingham, Donald & Co, Trial Halfpenny, 1792, legend within and around oval [from the die of DH 6], rev. engraved view of man at loom, window at left, birmingham 1792 engraved in exergue, no 29 bull street above, edge plain, 12.96g/9h (DH 9, this piece). Good very fine and patinated; UNIQUE £2,000-3,000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Late Robinson S. Brown Jr Collection.

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Provenance: J.R. Farnell Collection, Part II, Sotheby Parke Bernet Auction (New York), 26 May 1982, lot 8; S. Sweet Collection, Glendining Auction, 28 June 1989, lot 395; Davissons Mailbid Sale 19, 1 May 2003 (315, part).

This important piece, first published by Pye in 1801, was listed as ‘untraced’ by Dalton and Hamer at the time of compiling their catalogue and its whereabouts also remained unknown to Arthur Waters, writing in 1954 with the benefit of knowing what had been on the market in the previous 60 or so years, Ultimately it emerged in the late 1950s that the piece had been in the Farnell family collection, which had its origins with Richard Farnell in the early 19th century and which, in 1920, had been taken to the USA by his great-grandson, John R. Farnell Sr (1901-77) when he emigrated to Mount Vernon, NY. The experimental reverse may be an original proposal by the diesinker, perhaps ‘Wyon’ (carried a stage further on lot 636), but which ultimately was not adopted