Sussex coins among one of the finest collections of tradesmen’s tokens to come on the market in many years

The Patrick Deane Collection will go under the hammer with numismatic auction house A H Baldwin & Sons at The Strand, home of The Stanley Gibbons Stamp Emporium, on Thursday, May 25.

Stanley Gibbons said: "This is one of the finest collections of these tradesmen’s tokens to come onto the market in many years. They provide a marvellous window into this last decade of the 18th century. Every English county is represented and nearly every English city and market town has a merchant or shopkeeper issuing their own coins – for ten years, it was a truly a coinage 'of the people, by the people, for the people'."

James Dally was a linen draper in Chichester, with a shop near The Market Cross, and in 1794 he issued his own halfpenny to be given in change. His little copper coin is about 27mm in breadth and features both Queen Elizabeth I and the Cross, paid for by Bishop Edward Storey. The auction estimate is £100 to £150.

In the 1790s, there was no official small copper change in the country. Britain was at war with France and the price of copper had risen, causing the regal issue to vanish. This caused tremendous hardship for small merchants and shopkeepers throughout the country, for how were they to conduct the everyday transactions of selling small goods if they had no change?

The Crown was busy with the war and any unofficial production of coin of the realm would be seen as forgery, which was punishable by hanging. Eventually, a Welsh mining company hit upon the idea of turning its copper straight into pennies and halfpennies but calling them tokens, which would be redeemable in official coin, thus avoiding the forgery.

As they were the correct weight, no one bothered and in the space of a year, merchants in every town in England started issuing their token pence.

On the edge of James Dally’s halfpenny is the legend 'PAYABLE AT DALLYS CHICHESTER', meaning it was redeemable as a halfpenny and not an actual halfpenny. This solved the lack of small change in the 1790s and lasted for ten years, until the government got its act together after the war and issued official copper coins.

Throughout the 1790s, these copper 'token' pence and halfpence would be in many a pocket, all over the country, as small change.

There were many merchants in Sussex issuing their own coppers, particularly in Brighton and Chichester but also smaller places like East Grinstead, Horsham, Lamberhurst, Northiam, Winchelsea, Hastings and Eastbourne.

The halfpenny token used at Eastbourne in 1796 was issued by Frederick Fisher, who sold stationery and was also an auctioneer. His establishment was a fashionable library, a sort of reading room the visiting gentry would frequent, which explains the rather obsequious message on his token 'Prosperity to the gentry who visit East-bourn'.

The estimate for this coin is £150 to £200. Unfortunately, fortune did not smile on Frederick, as by 1803 he had gone bankrupt. But he then moved to London and became an estate agent.

The token for Brighton is an enigmatic piece, probably issued for collectors at the time but at the same time usable as change. This token features an officer conducting an attack and on the other side, ships and trophies of war – obviously a reference to the war with France. The auction estimate is £100 to £150.

To view the collection, visit thestrand.com/auctions