The Deane Collection Part II
Patrick Deane first became interested in tokens in 1970 when he started working at Spink and Son Limited when they were coin dealers. He was given the task of running their token department with the help of André de Clermont, who had previously been in charge of it and had an extremely good knowledge of the series.
When Patrick left Spink in 1973 and went on his own as a coin dealer, he started to collect the Eighteenth Century Token Series or Conder tokens as they are known in America, and formed a very good collection with many rare and interesting pieces. By 1984 he had amassed some 1,250 pieces and decided that there was too much competition from other collectors to buy the rarest and best pieces! He priced each piece in the collection and offered the tokens to the four main collectors at that time. They bought about half the collection and then over the next couple of years Patrick disposed of the remaining pieces.
Twenty years or so elapsed before the collection was re-started, when a chance meeting with Paul Dawson of Spink gave him the opportunity to start acquiring some extremely interesting pieces from the Cokayne collection that were appearing on the market at that time. Patrick’s enthusiasm for the Series returned and he started to collect again, creating an even larger collection than before, of about 2,500 pieces.
There are many unique pieces including some extremely interesting uniface trial strikings in this second collection.
In the ensuing years the collection grew and Patrick has now reached a stage in his life when he has decided to release the collection and accordingly has chosen to give A H Baldwin’s the task of handling the auction sale to disperse this magnificent collection of eighteenth century tokens onto the market.
He hopes that collectors from around the world will be excited by this offering of tokens from his collection and as he says ‘there will be something here for everybody to bid on’.
Introduction by Richard Gladdle
The second part is his collection of ‘Eighteenth Century Tokens’ consists of some eleven hundred and fifty coins almost five hundred lots, mostly halfpennies and a few farthings. These tokens are mainly copper with patterns in other metals and presentation pieces in silver. In a time of no official small change in the UK in the last two decades of the eighteenth century, partly due to the war with France, these were the only coppers one would have had one’s pocket – so necessary for the day-to-day, small transactions of shopkeepers and merchants. Every English County is represented and this pictorial ‘token’ coinage reflects most trades and professions, and personal, political and economic aspirations. They are, in short, a marvellous insight into what was going on in early industrial Britain which was also a country at war. They also provide a very interesting local aspect to the many English towns and cities that had their own citizens issuing copper coins.