99.8% sold by value across all categories, totaling £214,595
London – The Patrick Deane collection of 18th. c. tradesmen’s tokens is the largest collection of these coins to be sold in many years. This auction, the first of three, included the English penny tokens and all the tokens of Wales, Scotland and Ireland with many rarities achieving three or even four times their estimate.
Tokens in the British Isles were issued at a time when there was little official copper small change. This caused much distress amongst the local people where all small transactions (food, beer and household articles) were conducted in pence. A Welsh mining company hit on the idea of paying its workers with the copper it mined, however it wasn’t as easy as copying the regal issue; this would be ‘counterfeiting’, a practice which carried the death penalty. They settled on making similar weight coins but calling them ‘tokens’ which would be redeemable in the official coin. This caught on – and soon enough, merchants throughout the whole kingdom were making tokens with their own designs and messages.
The first Anglesey tokens were made in 1788 and this collection possessed some of the first uniface die trials for the coin – that would have been made for the Parys Mines Co. (the owners of the copper mine) to look at and approve. Lot 306, a PMC approved uniface trial of the die, showing the cowled head of a druid, sold for £2,728 against an estimate of £800-1,200. The Welsh star of the auction was an Anglesey halfpenny (lot 320) – this double headed halfpenny token sold for £5,000 against an estimate of £1,500-2,000.
The Irish section, out of all the ‘four nations’, soared. There was great interest from America who, with their strong dollar, did have an advantage, however – although we cannot tell you who bought the tokens – we can say that the majority went back to Ireland. Again, some of the early die trials for tokens hammered for two and three times estimate, highlighted by lot 521, a 1789 uniface die trial showing the unfinished obverse featuring the head of St. Patrick, which hammered for £4,800 (£5,952) against an estimate of £1,250-1,750.
The star of the sale was an English penny struck by a Soho grocer who lived in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire. He had an enormously deeply engraved die made to strike a coin for himself at Sawbridgeworth. Unfortunately, the fact that the dies were so deeply engraved meant that to make this large token, a great deal of pressure was needed in the strike. Unsurprisingly, the die broke after the fifth or possibly sixth strike – and only five examples are now known. This coin (lot 74) was estimated at £5,000-7,000 but hammered at £12,000.
One of the attractions of the tokens featured in this sale is that they were from the collection of Francis Cokayne. Cokayne was probably the most important collectors of 18th c tokens, Baldwins bought his collection in 1946 but unfortunately a number of the cabinets went missing. Although we do not have a record of what went missing it looks as though a lot of the tokens in this sale, especially the Welsh and Irish, are from these missing tokens – and so it has come full circle that we are selling tokens that have been unaccounted for in over 75 years.
“This week’s fantastic results prove that the token market is still as buoyant as ever and continues to be a very popular and widely collected field. We look forward to hosting part 2 of this great collection next summer” said Neil Paisley, Baldwin’s M.D and British coin specialist.
Baldwin’s, founded in 1872, is one of the world’s largest and most renowned numismatic dealers and auctioneers, offering ancient, British and world coins alongside military medals, tokens and medallions. The main saleroom is in London, for a full list of forthcoming auctions, plus further information on Baldwin’s team of specialists, please visit baldwin.co.uk
Watch numismatist and auctioneer, Richard Gladdle, talk in depth about the collection.
Further media coverage of this auction…
