1793 Half Penny

[undertaker]

I purchased this half penny the other day at a antique group shop. What sold me was its early date, nice condition and very low price. When I got home I looked it up on the net and found it to be called a conder token. Because it's a token is that why its was so cheap? Are these very collectible? I see on the net they made many different styles of these tokens. Did they mint alot of this one?

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Minelab PRO-FIND 35 Waterproof Pinpointer Metal Detector for Experts with Tone ID & Adjustable Sensitivity - Grab it through Amazon!

[MichiganRob]

This is a 1793 Anglesey "Conder" trade token
a photo and some info of this exact coin from 1792 may be found here: http://www.stoa.org/gallery/album135

HH
MichiganRob

 

[Roadquest]

Great looking coin er token

 

[Mackaydon]

Here's one like yours that sold for $38
http://www.coinsandstamps.com/foreigncoins/Condor Tokens/13 Warwickshire/bct1035.htm

It was private traders and industrialists who brought about the revival in the use of token coinage in Britain during the late 1780s. The reasons for resorting to a token coinage was due to a dearth in the circulating levels of regal copper coinage. For various reasons the British government of the time was reluctant to enter into new and consistent coining contracts with the Royal Mint. However, unlike the earlier token series of the seventeenth century, of which only a very small percentage were mining related, those re-introduced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were directly initiated by Britain’s mining industry whose token issues are highly represented. Such had become the importance of the metals and coal trade to Britain during its celebrated period of industrial revolution.
The huge series of tokens eminating from Britain’s industrial and commercial sectors after the late 1780’s were not officially recognized as legal tender by the British government. However, they never the less circulated in parallel with the country’s regal currency.

The Parys Mine Company under the leadership of Thomas Williams, the legendary "Copper King" of industrial folklore, had the honor of being the organization to re-introduce the use of private commercial tokens in Britain in 1787. The company’s first issues were of penny tokens and were primarily intended as a form of payment to the employees engaged in its mines and smelters in Wales. The Parys Mine tokens were of good weight (one ounce) and size containing copper of an equivalent intrinsic worth to their face value. The metal used in the manufacture of these tokens was from the company’s own mine on the island of Anglesey. The metal was smelted and initially coined in the company’s own private mint located at Holywell in North Wales. Production of the tokens was later moved to Birmingham.

Other commercial and industrial ventures were quick to follow the lead of the Parys Mine Company and so started a flood of token issues that circulated widely throughout Britain and Ireland. Among the other mining companies that entered into this frenzy of token issuing was the company shown on your coin: The Birmingham Mining & Copper Company, located in Redruth, Cornwall.
Don.......

Source:http://www.mining-memorabilia.co.uk/Tokens.htm